preg_replace

I hate regular expressions....

How do I do this: remove a line of code, from a configuration file, using a match


config.php


test.php


desired result:


actual result:


If I run test.php, it loads config.php and attempts to remove the line, blahblah 1 gets removed OK, but ALSO blahblah 3. I want 3 to stay because of the comment. blahblah 2 stays successfully.

Ideas?

In other words, how do I test for "replace this, but not if there is a doubleslash before the match, even if there are tabs and spaces"

You're making sure that the first character isn't a forward-slash, but then you're using "anything zero or more times" after it which allows a forward slash to come in.

What are the chances your config files have # style comments ?
Just checking for slashes would miss those.



How about this



It allows for whitespace at the beginning of the line, then only matches the variable.

Well PHP doesnt support # as a commentor. I am actually searching in a PHP file and replacing.

So I do need to check for // anywhere before the pattern. I will not check for /* */ combos

Since when ?

Since camperjohn never uses it.

Are you up and running with this now though, does the "whitespace zero or more times, followed by a variable" pattern work for you ?

Yes thank you good idea. That works.

It just means my patterns will correctly avoid:

// pattern
# pattern
(spacespacespace) // pattern

And will correctly catch

(spacespacespace) pattern

But will also avoid (even though it isn't a comment)

foobar pattern

Just means that anything before the pattern is considered a mismatch. This works fine for what I need.

I figured it would considering you mentioned it's a config file. My guess is that anything other than space found before a variable declaration in a config file is probably going to be a syntax error in almost every situation anyways.