replace ereg_replace with preg_replace [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How can I convert ereg expressions to preg in PHP? 4 answers

Hi need to change the function ereg_replace("[\]", "", $theData) to preg_replace

Answer 1

To port ereg_replace to preg_replace you need to put the regex between a pair of delimiter

Also your regx is [\] is invalid to be used for preg_replace as the \ is escaping the closing char class ]

The correct port is

preg_replace('/[\\\]/','',$theData) 

Also since the char class has just one char there is no real need of char class you can just say:

preg_replace('/\\\/','',$theData) 

Since you are replace just a single char, using regex for this is not recommended. You should be using a simple text replacement using str_replace as:

str_replace('\\','',$data);

Answer 2

str_replace("\\","",$theData);

But I seriously doubt you need that replace at all. most likely you need some other operation.
What is this replace for?

Answer 3

preg_replace("/\\\/", "", $theData);

Answer 4

I used this sed to automatically replace ereg_replace by preg_replace and put the required slashes in. Assumes no \" in the first regex

 sed -i 's#ereg_replace("\([^"]*\)"#preg_replace("/\1/"#g' *.php