regex php
ive never used regex expressions till now and had loads of difficulty trying to convert a [url]link here[/url] into an href for use with posting messages on a forum, heres what i manage to come up with:
$patterns = array(
"/[link](.*?)[/link]/",
"/[url](.*?)[/url]/",
"/[img](.*?)[/img]/",
"/[b](.*?)[/b]/",
"/[u](.*?)[/u]/",
"/[i](.*?)[/i]/"
);
$replacements = array(
"<a href="\1">\1</a>",
"<a href="\1">\1</a>",
"<img src="\1">",
"<b>\1</b>",
"<u>\1</u>",
"<i>\1</i>"
);
$newText = preg_replace($patterns,$replacements, $text);
at first it would collect ALL the tags into one link/bold/whatever, until i added the "?" i still dont fully understand it... but it works :)