Preg_replace with array replacements

Question

$string = ":abc and :def have apples.";
$replacements = array('Mary', 'Jane');

should become:

Mary and Jane have apples.

Right now I'm doing it like this:

preg_match_all('/:(\w+)/', $string, $matches);

foreach($matches[0] as $index => $match)
   $string = str_replace($match, $replacements[$index], $string);

Can I do this in a single run, using something like preg_replace?

Answer 1

You could use preg_replace_callback with a callback that consumes your replacements one after the other:

$string = ":abc and :def have apples.";
$replacements = array('Mary', 'Jane');
echo preg_replace_callback('/:\w+/', function($matches) use (&$replacements) {
    return array_shift($replacements);
}, $string);

Output:

Mary and Jane have apples.

Answer 2

$string = ":abc and :def have apples.";
$replacements = array('Mary', 'Jane');

echo preg_replace("/:\\w+/e", 'array_shift($replacements)', $string);

Output:

Mary and Jane have apples.

Answer 3

Try this

$to_replace = array(':abc', ':def', ':ghi');
$replace_with = array('Marry', 'Jane', 'Bob');

$string = ":abc and :def have apples, but :ghi doesn't";

$string = strtr($string, array_combine($to_replace, $replace_with));
echo $string;

here is result: http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/7a4c5b00f68ec40fdb35ce189d26446e3a2501c2