What is the easiest way of applying highlighting of some text excluding text within OCCASIONAL tags "<...>"?
CLARIFICATION: I want the existing tags PRESERVED!
$t =
preg_replace(
"/(markdown)/",
"<strong>$1</strong>",
"This is essentially plain text apart from a few html tags generated with some
simplified markdown rules: <a href=markdown.html>[see here]</a>");
Which should display as:
"This is essentially plain text apart from a few html tags generated with some simplified markdown rules: see here"
... BUT NOT MESS UP the text inside the anchor tag (i.e. <a href=markdown.html> ).
I've heard the arguments of not parsing html with regular expressions, but here we're talking essentially about plain text except for minimal parsing of some markdown code.
Actually, this seems to work ok:
<?php
$item="markdown";
$t="This is essentially plain text apart from a few html tags generated
with some simplified markdown rules: <a href=markdown.html>[see here]</a>";
//_____1. apply emphasis_____
$t = preg_replace("|($item)|","<strong>$1</strong>",$t);
// "This is essentially plain text apart from a few html tags generated
// with some simplified <strong>markdown</strong> rules: <a href=
// <strong>markdown</strong>.html>[see here]</a>"
//_____2. remove emphasis if WITHIN opening and closing tag____
$t = preg_replace("|(<[^>]+?)(<strong>($item)</strong>)([^<]+?>)|","$1$3$4",$t);
// this preserves the text before ($1), after ($4)
// and inside <strong>..</strong> ($2), but without the tags ($3)
// "This is essentially plain text apart from a few html tags generated
// with some simplified <strong>markdown</strong> rules: <a href=markdown.html>
// [see here]</a>"
?>
A string like $item="odd|string" would cause some problems, but I won't be using that kind of string anyway... (probably needs htmlentities(...) or the like...)