How could I convert something like this:
"hi (text here) and (other text)" come (again)
To this:
"hi \(text here\) and \(other text\)" come (again)
Basically, I want to escape "only" the parentheses that are inside quotes.
EDIT
I'm to new in Regex and so, I tried this:
$params = preg_replace('/(\'[^\(]*)[\(]+/', '$1\\\($2', $string);
But this will just escape the first occurrence of (.
EDIT 2
Maybe I should mention that my string could have these parentheses already escaped and, in this case, I don't want to escaped them again.
By the way, I need it working for both double and single quotes but I think that I can do that as long as I have a working example for one of them.
This should do it for both single and double quotes:
$str = '"hi \(text here)" and (other text) come \'(again)\'';
$str = preg_replace_callback('`("|\').*?\1`', function ($matches) {
return preg_replace('`(?<!\\\)[()]`', '\\\$0', $matches[0]);
}, $str);
echo $str;
output
"hi \(text here\)" and (other text) come '\(again\)'
It is for PHP >= 5.3. If you have a lower version (>=5) you have to replace the anonymous function in the callback with a separate function.
You can use preg_replace_callback for this;
// outputs: hi \(text here\) and \(other text\) come (again)
print preg_replace_callback('~"(.*?)"~', function($m) {
return '"'. preg_replace('~([\(\)])~', '\\\$1', $m[1]) .'"';
}, '"hi (text here) and (other text)" come (again)');
What about already escaped strings;
// outputs: hi \(text here\) and \(other text\) come (again)
print preg_replace_callback('~"(.*?)"~', function($m) {
return '"'. preg_replace('~(?:\\\?)([\(\)])~', '\\\$1', $m[1]) .'"';
}, '"hi \(text here\) and (other text)" come (again)');
Given the string
$str = '"hi (text here) and (other text)" come (again) "maybe (to)morrow?" (yes)';
Iterative method
for ($i=$q=0,$res='' ; $i<strlen($str) ; $i++) {
if ($str[$i] == '"') $q ^= 1;
elseif ($q && ($str[$i]=='(' || $str[$i]==')')) $res .= '\\';
$res .= $str[$i];
}
echo "$res\n";
But if you're a fan of recursion
function rec($i, $n, $q) {
global $str;
if ($i >= $n) return '';
$c = $str[$i];
if ($c == '"') $q ^= 1;
elseif ($q && ($c == '(' || $c == ')')) $c = '\\' . $c;
return $c . rec($i+1, $n, $q);
}
echo rec(0, strlen($str), 0) . "\n";
Result:
"hi \(text here\) and \(other text\)" come (again) "maybe \(to\)morrow?" (yes)
Here's how you can do it with the preg_replace_callback()
function.
$str = '"hi (text here) and (other text)" come (again)';
$escaped = preg_replace_callback('~(["\']).*?\1~','normalizeParens',$str);
// my original suggestion was '~(?<=").*?(?=")~' and I had to change it
// due to your 2nd edit in your question. But there's still a chance that
// both single and double quotes might exist in your string.
function normalizeParens($m) {
return preg_replace('~(?<!\\\)[()]~','\\\$0',$m[0]);
// replace parens without preceding backshashes
}
var_dump($str);
var_dump($escaped);