A better way to replace emoticons in PHP?

Question

Right now I am using this function for emoticons:

function emoticons($text) {
        $icons = array(
                \':)\'    =>  \'

        

Answer 1

Regular expressions are slow for this if the text is big, as much as i like them, you should only insert an icon if it's surrounded by spaces, that way your users won't riot when trying to write urls.