preg_replace regex problem

Question

I'm trying to alter the content of an email generated by a plugin, removing a lengthy section that starts with

NOTE: (the space is actually a tab) and ending with /
(lines 2-5 below). There are all sorts of characters and line feeds in between. I can't get the search to work. Here is the type of content and what I've tried at PHP Sandbox. I thought a non-greedy quantifier would work, but no joy. $content = 'Weather: rainy

NOTE: You are entering the twilight zone:
– No cell phones

Click here:
https://www.example.com/
—
To exit, visit:
https://example.org/wp-admin/admin.php?page=twilight;subpage=global_options
To see current twilight zone conditions, visit:
'; $search = '~

sNOTE[.nr]+?/
~'; $replace = ''; $content = preg_replace($search, $replace, $content); echo $content;

Jim Worrall · Answer

I finally got it figured out.  In order to see the content that I was trying to edit, I turned on debugging in wp-config.php:
define('WP_DEBUG', true); // set true
if ( WP_DEBUG ) {
    define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', '../logs/debug.log' );
    define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);  // don't display errors on pages
    @ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );
}

Then, in the function that does the replacing, I commented out that stuff and instead just put error_log( print_r( $content, true ) );.  When I triggered the email, the $content then showed up in that log.
Turns out the content IS different when the filter is applied than in the final email raw source.  The $content has no html except for <a> tags for links.  Once I changed the search pattern to match what was there in the log, it worked perfectly!

preg_replace regex problem

One Answer

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question