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

I think using regular expressions instead of just defining your emoticons. This could look like

// replaces a :) when it is surrounded by whitespaces
return preg_replace('/\s:)\s/', '', $text);