Problems Writing Regular Expression

[pedro_gb]

I'm having some problems finding a regular expression. It sounds very simple but I couldn't get anything to work. What I want is an eregi_replace (in PHP) that will find any characters including [ and ] and linebreaks. In another words a regular expression that will find anything (don't worry much about symbols). I won't use many symbols but the square brackets are essential. Thanks!

[Plebius]

Have you tried this? I'm not sure if it'll work or not.

.*

[pedro_gb]

Yep. Tried it and didn't work. Perhaps its because of the linebreaks or the squared brackets? Does anybody have a solutiion?

[pedro_gb]

Ah, It must be because of the squared brackets and it didn't work. I have tried \[ and \] but for some reason it doesn't work. Anybody know why the backslash doesn't seem to be doing anything?

[Kevin Yank]

Can you be more specific? For example, can you give:

[ul][li]The regular expression you're using.
[li]An example of some text you'd like to match.
[li]What your expression is matching instead.[/ul]

Your description is, I'm afraid, too general.

[edshuck]

hi

in the leon atkinson book "Core PHP Programming", he says "the eregi_replace function operates identically to ereg_replace with the exception that letters are matched with no regard for upper- or lowercase. "

i used the ereg_replace to find and replace some spaces the spaces in an address string with + so i could use the maps from Yahoo. I already had the address in the form of 123 Front Street and needed 123+Front+Street.

the form of the expression is

string ereg_replace(string pattern, string replacement, string text)

for my problem i had to convert the address to a usable form with the expression. mysql gave me $row["address"].

so it became:

$address=$row["address"];

then it was just a matter of using the expression where i neeeded the 'stuffed address' in the following form.

echo(ereg_replace(" ", "+", $address));

this is a piece of actual working code. does exactly what it is supposed to - finds a blank space in the string $address and replaces the blank space with a +.

but please give more detail to the question. i really need as much experience with regular expressions as i can get.

thanks ed