PHP - Want To Replace Certain Substring

I know you can use str_replace to replace a value with another value, or an array of values with an array of other values. What I'd like to do is replace each instance of a single value with an array of values which get iterated through for each instance found. Think prepared statements that you don't have to call setString or setInt on. Here's a made up example.
Code: [Select]
$db->query = 'SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_name = ? AND user_role = ?;
$db->params = array('hopelessX','admin');
$db->executeQuery(); //this contains a call to a private function that does the replace

I have everything else working except this. It works if I specify an array of values to replace and do something like below, but I was hoping to not have to support that method of replace if I didn't need to.
Code: [Select]
$db->query = 'SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_name = :name AND user_role = :role;
$db->replace = array(':name',':role');
$db->params = array('hopelessX','admin');
$db->executeQuery(); //this contains a call to a private function that does the replace

I can do it that way if I need to or I could make some overly complicated thing that finds each instance of the question mark, replaces it with a unique value and then adds that unique value to a replace array similarly to the method in code block two but that defeats to the purpose of making this simple database adapter in the first place (although it was mostly just for fun anyway).

Anyway, if anyone has any advice and knows of a simple means to achieve this goal that would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Hi, how do I extract a substring? I just want to store "car" in a variable for other uses:

Here is the original string:
car/red/blue/gun/hit

Any help much appreciated!

So I have a database with a bunch of dates in it. In this format 05/15/2011. And this is how I get that out.

$data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM location ORDER BY id ASC") or die(mysql_error());

while($info = mysql_fetch_array( $data )) {
 
  $date = $info['date'];
};

echo "$date";

The resulted echo would be 05/26/2011

How do I get $date to echo out JUST 05? I'm trying to isolate the month. I think the method is using substrings, but I havent had any luck.

Thanks any help would be great!

Folks,

I want to extract something from a URL, i think we need to use regex for this.

Example URL:
Code: [Select]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004JN01LW/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1305169492&sr=8-1

What we need to Extract:
So we need to extract  B004JN01LW  from the URL.

I tried to use substr() but i think its not useful for this purpose, can someone help me with Regex to extract this?

Cheers
Natasha

The situation is that I have a large string with some identifiers to say "replace me" with something else. My goal is to replace the values, but if one replacement includes one of the other keys, I don't want to replace it.   For example:

<?php
$str = 'some blob ~abc~ followed by ~def~';

$arr_orig = array(
	'~abc~',
	'~def~'
);

$arr_new  = array(
	'value~def~',
	'blah'
);

echo str_replace( $arr_orig, $arr_new, $str );
?>

This will echo: some blob valueblah followed by blah   But that's not what I'm trying to accomplish. Basically, I want ~abc~ to be replaced with the literal: value~def~ and for the ~def~ that happens to be part of that string to NOT be replaced. I hope what I'm asking is clear. Basically, preg_replace/str_replace with arrays seems no different than just doing a FOR loop and replacing ~abc~ and then ~def~. But that's not what I need.   I'm hoping that if ~abc~ is replaced with text that happens to be another identifier -- ~def~, ~xyz~, whatever -- that this already replaced text is not again replaced. Is there a built-in function to do something like this? If not, should I just parse the whole string and count characters or something? Seems like a pain (and slow!)