Re: case and accent - insensitive regular expression?

Giulio Mastrosanti <giulio@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:35:26 +0200

Brilliant !!!

so you replace every occurence of every accent variation with all the  
accent variations...

OK, that's it!

only some more doubts ( regex are still an headhache for me... )

preg_replace('/[iìíîïĩīĭįı]/iu',...  -- what's the meaning of  
iu after the match string?

preg_replace('/[aàáâãäåǻāăą](?!e)/iu',... whats (?!e)  for?  
-- every occurence of aàáâãäåǻāăą NOT followed by e?

Many thanks again for your effort,

I'm definitely on the good way

      Giulio

I was intrigued by your example, so I played around with it some more
this morning. My own quick web search yielded a lot of results for
highlighting search terms, but none that I found did what you're
after. (I admit I didn't look very deep.) I was up to something like
this before your reply came in. It's still by no means complete. It
even handles simple English plurals (words ending in 's' or 'es'), but
not variations that require changing the word base (like 'daisy' to
'daisies').

<?php
function highlight_search_terms($phrase, $string) {
   $non_letter_chars = '/[^\pL]/iu';
   $words = preg_split($non_letter_chars, $phrase);

   $search_words = array();
   foreach ($words as $word) {
       if (strlen($word) > 2 && !preg_match($non_letter_chars,  
$word)) {
           $search_words[] = $word;
       }
   }

   $search_words = array_unique($search_words);

   foreach ($search_words as $word) {
       $search = preg_quote($word);

       /* repeat for each possible accented character */
       $search = preg_replace('/(ae|æ|ǽ)/iu', '(ae|æ|ǽ)',  
$search);
       $search = preg_replace('/(oe|œ)/iu', '(oe|œ)', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[aàáâãäåǻāăą](?!e)/iu',
'[aàáâãäåǻāăą]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[cçćĉċč]/iu', '[cçćĉċč]',  
$search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[dďđ]/iu', '[dďđ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/(?<![ao])[eèéêëēĕėęě]/iu',
'[eèéêëēĕėęě]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[gĝğġģ]/iu', '[gĝğġģ]',  
$search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[hĥħ]/iu', '[hĥħ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[iìíîïĩīĭįı]/iu',  
'[iìíîïĩīĭįı]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[jĵ]/iu', '[jĵ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[kķĸ]/iu', '[kķĸ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[lĺļľŀł]/iu', '[lĺļľŀł]',  
$search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[nñńņňŉŋ]/iu',  
'[nñńņňŉŋ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[oòóôõöōŏőǿơ](?!e)/iu',
'[oòóôõöōŏőǿơ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[rŕŗř]/iu', '[rŕŗř]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[sśŝşš]/iu', '[sśŝşš]',  
$search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[tţťŧ]/iu', '[tţťŧ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[uùúûüũūŭůűųǔǖǘǚǜ]/iu',
'[uùúûüũūŭůűųǔǖǘǚǜ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[wŵ]/iu', '[wŵ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[yýÿŷ]/iu', '[yýÿŷ]', $search);
       $search = preg_replace('/[zźżž]/iu', '[zźżž]', $search);

       $string = preg_replace('/\b' . $search . '(e?s)?\b/iu', '<span
class="keysearch">$0</span>', $string);
   }

   return $string;

}
?>

I still can't help feeling there must be some better way, though.

well, i think I'm on the good way now, unfortunately I have some  
other
urgent work and can't try it immediately, but I'll let you know    :)

thank you!

   Giulio

Andrew