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How to spot all $tickers in string?

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By User



Consider the following string:







$MRK - Merck - ($AAPL, $MSFT, $F) having day $AA! like $P and me :)







Although it's jibberish, it shows my problem. I want to scan for all words starting with a dollar-sign ($) and check them against a pre-defined list of tickers. If there's a match, replace them with a label ({TICKER}), as follows:







{TICKER} - Merck - ({TICKER}, {TICKER},{TICKER}) having a day {TICKER}! like 

{TICKER} an me :)







I now use this function:







function _process_tickers($string) {

  $result = db_query("SELECT symbol FROM us_stocks");

  while ($row = db_fetch_object($result)) {

    $tickers[] = ' $' . $row->symbol . ' ';

  }

  return str_replace($tickers, ' {TICKER} ', $tweet);

}







Problem: this only catches tickers that are surrounded by spaces (this $AA is surrounded by spaces) but not other situations like (this ticker has only a space in in front $AA) or (this one is surrounded by commas: my,$AA, ticker). But also two tickers right after each other (happy with $AA$XOM) - should become (happy with {TICKER}{TICKER}). How do I cath all these possible situations?


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Comments

  1. Tips For AllFebruary 10, 2012 at 1:38 PM

    Use regular expressions:

    preg_replace('/\$[A-Z]+/', '{TICKER}', $tweet);

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tips For AllFebruary 10, 2012 at 1:38 PM

    What's the downside of changing this code

    $tickers[] = ' $' . $row->symbol . ' ';


    to this?

    $tickers[] = '$' . $row->symbol;


    Doing so will make this change regardless of what comes before or after the ticker.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tips For AllFebruary 10, 2012 at 1:38 PM

    You are probably looking for the \b word boundary If the "tickers" will always just be a string of capital letters, this should suffice:

    <?php
    $str = '$MRK - Merck - ($AAPL, $MSFT, $F) having day $AA! like $P and me :)';
    echo preg_replace('#\$[A-Z]+#', '{TICKER}', $str), "\n";


    Output:

    {TICKER} - Merck - ({TICKER}, {TICKER}, {TICKER}) having day {TICKER}! like {TICKER} and me :)

    ReplyDelete

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