Question

PHP PCRE Regex or str_replace for Hex Characters "0D-0A 0C 0D 0A"

Asked by: FrankTech

I have hundreds of TXT files, in ASCII format, that have a lots of page-breaks that I want to remove or replace.  
    When I look at it in Windows Notepad, it just looks like a little vertical rectangle on its own line.  As best I can tell from a hex viewer, the hex characters for this page-break are:
     0D-0A 0C 0D 0A

I know how to do PCRE regex for a single hex character like
     $string = preg_replace('/\x0A/', '\n', $string);
but I would prefer to do a full-replace of the whole page-break code (for example, to replace the whole thing with an empty string).
    I don't know how to handle a hyphenated code e.g. "0D-0A" or a whole string of codes like 0D-0A 0C 0D 0A .

    And because str_replace is faster than preg_replace, I hope there's a way to do it with str_replace.
    Please advise.

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Asked On
2007-11-07 at 15:24:28ID22946321
Tags

hex

,

0d

,

0a

,

php

Topics

Regular Expressions

,

Miscellaneous Programming

,

PHP Scripting Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: ozoPosted on 2007-11-07 at 15:31:04ID: 20237575

/[\x0A-\x0D]\x0C\x0D\x0A/

 

by: FrankTechPosted on 2007-11-07 at 15:49:26ID: 20237763

ozo,
    That worked.  Thanks!

 

by: b0lsc0ttPosted on 2007-11-07 at 15:56:16ID: 20237846

FrankTech,

If the suggestion above doesn't work or isn't enough could you upload a small sample of the text with those characters.  You can zip the file and upload the zip file to www.ee-stuff.com , a site just for EE members.  Let me know if you have a question or need more info on this.   What is the hex viewer you used?

Most likely you will need to use a PHP function that will support an expression.  I don't believe str_replace will.

Let me know if you have any questions or need more information.

b0lsc0tt

 

by: b0lsc0ttPosted on 2007-11-07 at 15:57:42ID: 20237856

Oops, should've refreshed.  I left my browser too long. :)  Good job Ozo!

bol

 

by: FrankTechPosted on 2007-11-07 at 16:03:36ID: 20237917

b0lsc0tt,
   Thanks. I discovered that str_replace _does_ work for single hex characters if I use double quotes, like this:
        $text = str_replace("\x0A", "", $text);
OR with combinations of single characters, like this:
        $text = str_replace("\x0A\x0C\x0D", "", $text);

but I couldn't get it to work with the hyphated character \x0A-\x0D  .  I wish it could, because that would be faster than preg_replace.

 

by: b0lsc0ttPosted on 2007-11-07 at 16:38:02ID: 20238257

Yes, I didn't think of that possibility.  That isn't really an expression still but is very helpful to remember.  In a string that uses double quotes PHP will understand a number of "special characters."  As you found out the \xHH is used for characters with a hex reference.  Since the hexadecimal reference only allows 1 or 2 characters the hypenated one would have a problem.  I am actually still curious as to what that charact is if it really is a single character.  Oh, well. :)

If you are curious there is info on the other characters at http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.double .

bol

 

by: ddrudikPosted on 2007-11-07 at 17:17:33ID: 20238538

FrankTech, note that the construct "[\x0A-\x0D]" is the same as either "[\x0A\x0B\x0C\x0D]" or "(\x0A|\x0B|\x0C|\x0D)".  Normally a page break in a text file would be represented as the sequence "\x0C\x0D\x0A", the "\x0D\x0A" you saw prior to the page break was likely a CRLF sequence.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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