Help with script to censor words

Hi gang

I would appreciate some help with the censor words script that I am attempting to create. So far I have managed to create this.

 
$str = "This is an assessment";
 
$banned_words = "ass|asswipe"
$censor_words = explode("|", $banned_words);
foreach ($censor_words as $word) {
$str = preg_replace("/\b($word)\b/", str_repeat("*", strlen($word)), $str);
}
 

PHP:

The way I have this at the moment, it will censor "ass" and "asswipe" providing that they are used on their own and not part of another word. How would I change this so that it will also censor them when they are part of another word like "assessment" would appear as "***essment".

Thanks
Phil

 

"/$word/ig"

"i" makes it case insensitive and "g" makes it greedy so all instances are replaced.

This is generally a futile excercise as there are a million and one ways to be vulgar.

 

$str = preg_replace("/\b($word)\b/", str_repeat("*", strlen($word)), $str);

Remove the \b from the regex - \b matches a word boundary.

You probably do want to go case-insensitive but you don't need the g modifier - in terms of regex, greedy/ungreedy relates to quantifiers, not the number of replacements to make. By default, when you use a +, * or ? symbol, it will match as much as possible (hence greedy).

 

Thanks for the responce thats help a lot. How do you add 2 checks in the regex function? Say if i wanted to use \b and the \i for case-insensitive. would it be like this "/\b\i($word)\b\i/" or something else?

 

Ahh I eventually found it on the PHP website hidden away in the function manuals. \b will do the boundries and (?i) will do the case-insensitive. Thanks for the help.

 

\b is part of the pattern itself and goes where needed. i is a pattern modifier that goes after the delimiter and applies to the whole pattern.

"/\b($word)\b/i"