php regular expression help?

Question

how to i replace

Apple 123456

to

Apple 1|Apple 2|Apple 3|Apple 4|Apple 5|Apple 6

by php pcre?

Answer 1

With this one you get partially what you want:

<?php
    echo preg_replace('/([0-9])/', 'Apple $1|', 'Apple 123456');

That results in: Apple Apple 1|Apple 2|Apple 3|Apple 4|Apple 5|Apple 6|

For removing the first "Apple" you could str_replace() or explode() the initial string, resulting something like

<?php
    $string = 'Apple 123456';
    $string = str_replace("Apple", "", $string);
    echo preg_replace('/([0-9])/', 'Apple $1|', $string);

The result here is Apple 1|Apple 2|Apple 3|Apple 4|Apple 5|Apple 6|. You can remove the last pipe by using substr($result, 0, -1).

The final code will look like this:

<?php
    $string = 'Apple 123456';
    $string = str_replace("Apple", "", $string);
    $regex = preg_replace('/([0-9])/', 'Apple $1|', $string);
    echo substr($regex, 0, -1);

Answer 2

Modified version of Bogdan's regex using negative lookahead.

Replace number with "number|Apple " unless it is the last character in the string.

<?
$string = "Apple 123456";
echo preg_replace('/([0-9])(?!$)/', '$1|Apple ', $string);
?>

Ouput: Apple 1|Apple 2|Apple 3|Apple 4|Apple 5|Apple 6