How can I use str_replace in PHP without allowing it to re-replace the characters that have been used in the $replace_with in the following code?
<?php
$string='abcd';
$replace= array('a','c');
$replace_with = '[ac]';
$string=str_replace($replace,$replace_with,$string);
echo $string;
?>
The result would be:
"[a[ac]]b[ac]d"
How can I force my script to replace the 'a' in $string with '[ac]' once only without allowing it to replace the 'c' inside the newly inserted '[ac]'?
strtr() does precisely what you ask:
$string = strtr( $string, array( 'a'=>'[ac]', 'c'=>'[ac]' ) );
Output:
[ac]b[ac]d
Relevant excerpt:
If given two arguments, the second should be an array in the form
array('from' => 'to', ...). The return value is a string where all the occurrences of the array keys have been replaced by the corresponding values. The longest keys will be tried first. Once a substring has been replaced, its new value will not be searched again.
