This code seems to work on a simpler level but not on the one I'm trying to use. It's for a website's search engine.
First the result is gotten from the database like so:
$query = "select * from $tbl_name where name like \"%$var%\" OR text like \"%$var%\"";
$numresults=mysql_query($query);
$num=mysql_num_rows($numresults);
if ($num == 0) //if no results found
{
"No results found";
}
else {Then the result is gotten from the database and matched, it's intended to match all the loosely, everything in the array $skip can be skipped over while matching and then the matched terms are highlighted.
$skip = array(" ","-","_","'"); //ignore
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$name = $row['name'];
$text = nl2br($row['text']);
/*stop input's ($var) casing from affecting the output's casing, skip over chars specified in $skip*/
$name = preg_replace('/([?]*' . str_replace('@@@', "['\s_-]*",str_replace($skip,'@@@',$var)) . '[?]*)/i', '<b>${1}</b>', $name);
$text = preg_replace('/([?]*' . str_replace('@@@', "['\s_-]*",str_replace($skip,'@@@',$var)) . '[?]*)/i', '<b>${1}</b>', $text);
echo $name . $text;The above matches substrings (case insensitive) but doesn't skip the terms listed i.e. for $text to be "hello world", "hello" or "world" would be recognised but not "hello-world" which should.
If the same matching is done on a simpler level then it works. By simpler level I mean another smaller script which runs on the same principle for instance the following, which works, which is pretty much the same thing I'm doing (unless I'm missing something)
<?php
$words = "hEllO wOrLD";
$skip = array(" ","-","_","'");
$phrase = "I made a program helloworld which prints Hello World hello";
echo preg_replace('/([?]*' . str_replace('@@@', "['\s_-]*",str_replace($skipchars,'@@@',$words)) . '[?]*)/i', '<b>${1}</b>', $phrase);
?>