ereg_replace for PHP 5.3 +?

Question

I've seen a solution for not having to rework usage of the ereg function for PHP 5.3: Good alternative to eregi() in PHP

It uses if(!function_exists....

Is there a function that can be used in this way for ereg_replace?

ereg_replace("<!--.*-->","",$str);

ereg_replace("[^a-z,A-Z]", "", $str);

Answer 1

Use the PCRE function preg_replace instead:

preg_replace("/<!--.*-->/", "", $str);
preg_replace("/[^a-z,A-Z]/", "", $str);

POSIX ERE is (nearly) a complete subset of PCRE. So you can use (nearly) any POSIX ERE regular expression with a PREG implementation. See the Regular Expression Flavor Comparison for futher details.

Answer 2

This line is now raising an exception, I suspect my web host has upgrade it's PHP installation.

$vq = ereg_replace('[[:space:]]+', ' ', trim($vq));

If I just switch to preg_replace it complains about the trailing +

I was hoping for a quick fix, this was from an example I think from IBM.