How do I convert doashes to underscores?

[jeddiki]

Hi,

I am trying to change dashes to underscores in text file.

The reason is that I am having problems processing some xml tags
so I want to change this <merchant-name> to <merchant_nam e>

To do this I used this regex:

$pattern = '#<(\w+)-(\w+)>#';
$replacement = '<$1_$2>';
$source = preg_replace( $pattern, $replacement, $source, -1 , $count);

But for some reason, nothing is changed

Have I misunderstood something ?

The idea is that <anything-here> gets changed to <anything_her e>

There is data between the tags that should not be touched, it is just the tag
names themselves that I want to change.

In the file, there about 2000 tags which need changing.

Can anyone see what I am doing wrong ?


Thanks.

[Atli]

Hey.

A part from the tag name, are the tags empty? Are there any attributes?

You regular expression only matches a tag like:
- <xxx-yyy>

If it contains anything else, it will fail to match.
- <xxx-yyy >
- <xxx-yyy/>
- <xxx-yyy key="value">

To fix this, it needs to allow characters to trail the tag name
[code=]$pattern = '#<(\w+)-(\w+)([^>]*)>#';
$replacement = '<$1_$2$3>';[/code]

Also note that if anything between the tag name and the closing > char contains a > char, this will cause a problem. (Like if the value of an attribute contains a > char.) - This is why it is recommended to use XML or HTML parsers to manipulate HTML rather than regular expressions. (HTML is not a "regular" markup.)

[objx]

Try this one. I tested it and it worked on my computer:

$source = preg_replace('#<([^>\-]+)-([^>]+)>#mU', "<$1_$2>", $source, -1 , $count);