MyChances.net

I was looking for a recursive str_replace in php tonight and I couldn’t find any, so I wrote one. This takes the exact same parameters as str_replace, in the same order. It recursively searches the $subject, replacing $search with $replace, while keeping track of how many times ($count) it has replaced the $subject.

<?
function str_replace_recursive($search,$replace,$subject,&$count=0){
	$newcount=$count;
	$subject = str_replace($search,$replace,$subject,$newcount);
	$count = $newcount+$count;
	if(!(strpos($subject,$search)===false)){
		return str_replace_recursive($search,$replace,$subject,$count);
	}else{
		return $subject;
	}
}
?>

Example:

$count=0;
$string = "; ; I; am; ; ; ; ; become; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;";
string = str_replace_recursive('; ;',';',$string,$count);

echo $string;
echo $count;

Outputs:
string --> I; am; become;
count --> 12

(Note that this is not the best code to use for this situation; can you write a faster solution to this example using only plain vanilla str_replace?)