Title: Regular Expression Help
Last modified: August 18, 2016
---
# Regular Expression Help
* [blackc2004](https://wordpress.org/support/users/blackc2004/)
* (@blackc2004)
* [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regular-expression-help/)
* Hi, I’m working on a plugin which searches the content of a post for a href links
and adds a style to it based on if it’s an external link or if it’s an image
file.
* I’ve got the following already:
` return preg_replace( array( '/(?(?=]*>.
+) (?:]*>.+) | ([^="']?)((?:https?|ftp|bf2|)://[^<> nr]+) )/iex','/
]*)target="?[^"']+"?/i', '/]+)>/i', '/(^|s)(www.[^<> nr]+)/iex','/(([
_A-Za-z0-9-]+)(.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@([A-Za-z0-9-]+) (.[A-Za-z0-9-]+)*)/iex' ), array("
stripslashes((strlen('2')>0?'123':''))", '', "stripslashes((strlen('2')>0?'123':''))", "stripslashes((strlen('
2')>0?'':''))" ), $text );
* I have two problems with this.
1) I’m not sure how to determine the difference
between a link and a link to an image file. I’d like to apply different styles
to each
* 2) When I have an img src like this:
`
` It replaces it with this: `
http://
www.aidslifecycle.org/images/alc5_logo.gif"/>`
* Can anyone help me out? I’m not very good with Regular expressions!
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
* Thread Starter [blackc2004](https://wordpress.org/support/users/blackc2004/)
* (@blackc2004)
* [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regular-expression-help/#post-487780)
* Can anyone please help me with this?!
* Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
* (@otto42)
* WordPress.org Admin
* [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regular-expression-help/#post-487781)
* That seems a bit complex. Might I suggest doing it in stages instead of trying
to make one huge regular expression? Multiple simple regular expressions are
faster than big giant ugly ones.
* Do a preg_replace for the images, then another for the links, and so on.
* [cms](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cms/)
* (@cms)
* [19 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regular-expression-help/#post-487782)
* Hello,
* looks a little bit complex to me, too. I just paste some modified old code I
used in an old project:
` $regaus= '[^\">]'; $search = array ("']*?http({
$regaus2}*)\"'si", "']*?http({$regaus2}*)\"'si"); $replace = array ("<
a href=\"http\1\" style=\"xyz\"", "