Access individual regex matches in a string or file repost

				
//**************************************
// Name: Access individual regex matches in a string or file repost
// Description:This shows how you to loop through an array and access regular expression matches individually, in this case replacing them, and rebuild the new array at the same time. If you're wondering why not just use a replace function, it's because I needed to replace each regular expression match in a file with a different item; replace function would replace them all with the same. (I'm reposting this because I posted it as a tutorial before on accident)
// By: C.Smith
//
//This code is copyrighted and has// limited warranties.Please see http://www.Planet-Source-Code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=2150&lngWId=8//for details.//**************************************

$tpl_src = implode(file($my_file));//template file with variables 
$pattern = "/\[p:(.+)\]/";// the regex pattern to look for and change each individually 
$pieces = preg_split($pattern,$tpl_src, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);//split the data according to the regex pattern 
/* I was using an older version of php that 
doesn't have array referencing yet so the var 
$new_src is used to copy the array and change 
the parts I want. If you have php5, array 
referencing would be a better way to do this. 
*/ 
$new_src = ''; //This will hold the new data. 
foreach($pieces as $value){//loop through the array 
if(is_a_variable($value){//My function to determine whether the regex pattern was a valid variable, you can lose this check and it'll work fine. 
$value = "[new value " .rand(1,100). "]";//Replace each individual variable with something different and unique to each variable. 
} 
$new_src .= $value;//Pieces the array back together bit by bit. 
} 
echo stripslashes($new_src); //Display the new page with each of the same variable now showing a different value.