Numeric words in a string into numbers

Question

I have string:

$string = \'Five People\';

I want to replace all number-words into numbers. So results are:

$strin         


        

Answer 1

You can use this regex:

\b(zero|a|one|tw(elve|enty|o)|th(irt(een|y)|ree)|fi(ft(een|y)|ve)|(four|six|seven|nine)(teen|ty)?|eight(een|y)?|ten|eleven|forty|hundred|thousand|(m|b)illion|and)+\b

By the way, there might be a better regex out there. Until someone posts it, you can use the following implementation

$regex = '/\b(zero|a|one|tw(elve|enty|o)|th(irt(een|y)|ree)|fi(ft(een|y)|ve)|(four|six|seven|nine)(teen|ty)?|eight(een|y)?|ten|eleven|forty|hundred|thousand|(m|b)illion|and)+\b/i';
function word_numbers_to_numbers($string) {
    return preg_replace_callback($regex, function($m) {
               return words_to_number($m[0]);
           },$string);
}