Pattern Match/Replace

[james_t_2008]

I have a small piece of code. All I want it do is find any instances of the word 'hot', and replace it with '###'.

This is what I have:

$comments = $form_results{'yourcomments'};
 
print "Content-type=text/html\n\n";
 
if($comments =~ /hot/) {
	print "You cannot say the word hot.";
	$comments =~ s/hot/###/g;
}
 
print $comments;

When I run it, I get a Error 500. I can't see what's wrong with it though?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[james_t_2008]

Okay I sorted it. Stupid error on my part:

Content-type=text/html\n\n

should be:

content-type: text/html\n\n

Oh well!

[KevinR]

I have a small piece of code. All I want it do is find any instances of the word 'hot', and replace it with '###'.

This is what I have:

$comments = $form_results{'yourcomments'};
 
print "Content-type=text/html\n\n";
 
if($comments =~ /hot/) {
	print "You cannot say the word hot.";
	$comments =~ s/hot/###/g;
}
 
print $comments;

When I run it, I get a Error 500. I can't see what's wrong with it though?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

What about the word "shot" or "hotel"? Your regexp will still reply with "you can't say the word hot" because you are searching for a substring match. Add the \b anchor /\bhot\b/ if you really want to match a word, or leave it as is if you really do want to match substrings.

[james_t_2008]

Hi. Thank you for the response!

That was a good idea thank you! However, if enter "hothothothot", it assumes it's one word, when actually its a repetition of the word I don't want. Is there a way to remove every occurance, even where there are no spaces?

Thanks!

[KevinR]

Hi. Thank you for the response!

That was a good idea thank you! However, if enter "hothothothot", it assumes it's one word, when actually its a repetition of the word I don't want. Is there a way to remove every occurance, even where there are no spaces?

Thanks!

You could but you will find this type of filtering is not hard to defeat by the users. For example, instead of 'hot' they will enter 'h0t'.

[james_t_2008]

Oh that level of flitering isn't neccesary in this case. How would I go about stopping reoccurances like "hothothothot".

Thanks!

[simjosunny0]

yes level of flitering isn't neccesary in this case.