preg_replace with arrays

Question

My database has a table with 1000 terms and their definitions. I want to print those definitions and add a span tag to every word that is already a term.

I use this to create the two arrays (patterns and replacements):

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rsd)){  
$patterns[$i] = '/'.$row['term'].'/';
$patterns[$i+1] = '/<span class="linkedterm"><span class="linkedterm">'.$row['term'].'</span>/';

$replacements[$i+1] = '<span class="linkedterm">'.$row['term'].'</span>';
$replacements[$i] = '<span class="linkedterm">'.$row['term'];   

$i = $i + 2;

}

And this to echo the definitions:

echo preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $row['definition']);

• With this code i have an error for character /, at the close span tag. So I want a solution for this, to be able to pass a value with / char. Or any other solution that I may have missed.

Thanks

Answer 1

You might want to look at preg_quote

Quote regular expression characters

Answer 2

The / is also your delimiter character (to point out the start and end of your regex). So if you want to search for a literal /, make sure you escape it with a backslash, like so:

$patterns[$i+1] = '/<span class="linkedterm"><span class="linkedterm">'.$row['term'].'<\/span>/';

Answer 3

$patterns[$i] = '/'.preg_quote($row['term']).'/'; 
$patterns[$i+1] = '/'.preg_quote('<span class="linkedterm" ><span class="linkedterm" >'.$row['term'].'</span>', '/').'/';