How to replace ereg?

Question

I'm getting the following message for some php I have to use but did not write:

Deprecated: Function ereg() is deprecated in /opt/lampp/htdocs/webEchange/SiteWeb_V5/inc/html2fpdf.php on line 466

This is line 466:

if(ereg('^([^=]*)=["\']?([^"\']*)["\']?$',$v,$a3))

I tried simply replacing with preg_match, but it couldn't recognize the = modifier in the regular expression.. I'm not too good with regular expression yet and solving this requires that I learn the regexp ereg needs AND the regexp preg_match needs (which, if I am not mistaken, is different)... Could you guys help me out with this one?

Thanks

Benham

Possible duplicate of How can I convert ereg expressions to preg in PHP? – Invagination

Answer 1

POSIX extended regular expressions (POSIX ERE, used by ereg) and Perl-combatible regular expressions (PCRE, used by preg_match) are very similar. Except from some special POSIX expressions, PCRE is a superset of POSIX ERE.

That means you just need to put your POSIX ERE regular expressions into delimiters (here /) and escape any occurrence of that character inside the regular expression and you have a valid PCRE regular expression:

/^([^=]*)=["']?([^"']*)["']?$/

So:

preg_match('/^([^=]*)=["\']?([^"\']*)["\']?$/', $v, $a3)

Bewitch

Not really a superset (besides character classes), e.g. matching /AB|ABC/ on ABCD with ERE will give the longest match (ABC) but PCRE will give the first match (AB). – Gracie

Answer 2

Try:

if(preg_match('~^([^=]*)=["\']?([^"\']*)["\']?$~',$v,$a3))

The regex in preg_match needs to be enclosed between a pair of delimiters, which is not the case with the deprecated ereg() function.

Fia

Answer 3

Copied by other contributor:

This not is a replace is recover ereg function:

if(!function_exists('ereg'))            { function ereg($pattern, $subject, &$matches = []) { return preg_match('/'.$pattern.'/', $subject, $matches); } }
if(!function_exists('eregi'))           { function eregi($pattern, $subject, &$matches = []) { return preg_match('/'.$pattern.'/i', $subject, $matches); } }
if(!function_exists('ereg_replace'))    { function ereg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $string) { return preg_replace('/'.$pattern.'/', $replacement, $string); } }
if(!function_exists('eregi_replace'))   { function eregi_replace($pattern, $replacement, $string) { return preg_replace('/'.$pattern.'/i', $replacement, $string); } }
if(!function_exists('split'))           { function split($pattern, $subject, $limit = -1) { return preg_split('/'.$pattern.'/', $subject, $limit); } }
if(!function_exists('spliti'))          { function spliti($pattern, $subject, $limit = -1) { return preg_split('/'.$pattern.'/i', $subject, $limit); } }

Dani

What contributor did this come from? And are you saying this doesn’t work? Reading the code, this appears to offer a polyfill for the deprecated functions. Have you tested with the OP’s specific expression? – Onder

Answer 4

the preg_ family expects the regex to be delimited. Instead of:

'^([^=]*)=["\']?([^"\']*)["\']?$'

try:

'/^([^=]*)=["\']?([^"\']*)["\']?$/'

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