<div>
Unlike ereg() that has been deprecated and will be removed, the PCRE expressions require a delimiter. &nbsp;Certain pieces of information for the regex follow the trailing delimiter. &nbsp;For example, you can make the expression case-insensitive by adding the letter &quot;i&quot; at the end, after the final delimiter.<br />
<br />
You may also find that certain &quot;meta characters&quot; need to be escaped by prepending them with a backslash. &nbsp;PHP is inconsistent in its application of this rule. &nbsp;Enlightening reading here:<br />
<a href="http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php" rel="ugc">http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php</a>
</div>


Unlike ereg() that has been deprecated and will be removed, the PCRE expressions require a delimiter.  Certain pieces of information for the regex follow the trailing delimiter.  For example, you can make the expression case-insensitive by adding the letter "i" at the end, after the final delimiter.

You may also find that certain "meta characters" need to be escaped by prepending them with a backslash.  PHP is inconsistent in its application of this rule.  Enlightening reading here:
http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php [http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php]

<div>
Hi Ray,<br />
<br />
Thanks for the information. I would class myself a little above beginner so will have a look...<br />
<br />
Is there any reason why i should accept and use hernst42 answer?
</div>


Hi Ray,

Thanks for the information. I would class myself a little above beginner so will have a look...

Is there any reason why i should accept and use hernst42 answer?

<div>
Sure! &nbsp;Just looking at it, I am fairly sure it works. &nbsp;In some cases the wickets &lt;&nbsp;and &gt;&nbsp;may be treated as meta-characters, but this is not one of them.
</div>


Sure!  Just looking at it, I am fairly sure it works.  In some cases the wickets < and > may be treated as meta-characters, but this is not one of them.

<div>
Many Thanks hernst42 <br />
<br />
&amp;&nbsp;Ray!
</div>


<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
Hi Experts,<br />
<br />
Why does this add two &lt;&lt;&nbsp;around the preg replace...<br />
<br />
I just want to add strong to first para only<br />
<br />
$text = preg_replace('&lt;p&gt;', '&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;', $text, 1);<br />
$text = preg_replace('&lt;/p&gt;', '&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;', $text, 1);<br />
<br />
Cheers
</div>
</div>


Hi Experts,

Why does this add two << around the preg replace...

I just want to add strong to first para only

$text = preg_replace('<p>', '<p><strong>', $text, 1);
$text = preg_replace('</p>', '</strong></p>', $text, 1);

Cheers

php and preg replace

PHP is a widely-used server-side scripting language especially suited for web development, powering tens of millions of sites from Facebook to personal WordPress blogs. PHP is often paired with the MySQL relational database, but includes support for most other mainstream databases. By utilizing different Server APIs, PHP can work on many different web servers as a server-side scripting language.