Correct form of indefinite article (a, an) in PHP strings

Question

Is there an easy way to substitute a/an in a string to agree with the following word - much the same as the way 'S' works in Date format?

e.g.

$apple = 'apple';
$pear = 'pear';
echo "This is a $apple, this is a $pear."

--> This is an apple, this is a pear

Answer 1

not sure if it works in PHP that way but a really simple solution would be:

$string = preg_replace('/\ba\b\s([aeiou])/',   'an $1', $string);
$string = preg_replace('/\ban\b\s([^aeiou])/', 'an $1', $string);

(Not sure about the a/an rule as there is no such rule in german and i usually use the one that sounds better)

Explanation:

\b is a word boundary, so \ba\b looks for the word a, followed by a space and one of the letters [aeiou]. The letter is captured to $1 and the expression is replaced with an followed by the captured letter.

Answer 2

Try this :

$l = array('a apple is a fruit', 'a banana is also a fruit');

foreach($l as $s) {
  $s = preg_replace('/(^| )a ([aeiouAEIOU])/', '$1an $2', $s);
  echo $s,"\n";
}

output:

an apple is a fruit
a banana is also a fruit

Answer 3

You could use a regular expression to swap the a/and depending on what follows it. The trickier part will actually be defining all of the cases on which to swap - it is more complicated then 'if its followed by a vowel'.

When to use a/an:

Use a before words/abbreviations that begin with a consonant sound; use an before words/abbreviations that begin with a vowel sound. This is based on pronunciation, not spelling.

Hence:

• a university
• an hour
• an ytterbium molecule
• a yellow dog
• a U
• an M

Beginning of a regex to solve it

$text = preg_replace("/(?=a|e|i|o|u|yt)a/", "an", $text);