I have the following error:
Warning: preg_replace(): Unknown modifier ‘]’ in xxx.php on line 38
This is the code on line 38:
<?php echo str_replace("</ul></div>", "", preg_replace("<div[^>]*><ul[^>]*>", "", wp_nav_menu(array('theme_location' => 'nav', 'echo' => false)) )); ?>
How can I fix this problem?
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Answer
Why the error occurs
In PHP, a regular expression needs to be enclosed within a pair of delimiters. A delimiter can be any non-alphanumeric, non-backslash, non-whitespace character; /
, #
, ~
are the most commonly used ones. Note that it is also possible to use bracket style delimiters where the opening and closing brackets are the starting and ending delimiter, i.e. <pattern_goes_here>
, [pattern_goes_here]
etc. are all valid.
The “Unknown modifier X” error usually occurs in the following two cases:
When your regular expression is missing delimiters.
When you use the delimiter inside the pattern without escaping it.
In this case, the regular expression is <div[^>]*><ul[^>]*>
. The regex engine considers everything from <
to >
as the regex pattern, and everything afterwards as modifiers.
Regex: <div[^> ]*><ul[^>]*> │ │ │ │ └──┬──┘ └────┬─────┘ pattern modifiers
]
here is an unknown modifier, because it appears after the closing >
delimiter. Which is why PHP throws that error.
Depending on the pattern, the unknown modifier complaint might as well have been about *
, +
, p
, /
or )
or almost any other letter/symbol. Only imsxeADSUXJu
are valid PCRE modifiers.
How to fix it
The fix is easy. Just wrap your regex pattern with any valid delimiters. In this case, you could chose ~ and get the following:
~<div[^>]*><ul[^>]*>~ │ │ │ └─ ending delimiter └───────────────────── starting delimiter
If you’re receiving this error despite having used a delimiter, it might be because the pattern itself contains unescaped occurrences of the said delimiter.
Or escape delimiters
/foo[^/]+bar/i
would certainly throw an error. So you can escape it using a backslash if it appears anywhere within the regex:
/foo[^/]+bar/i │ │ │ └──────┼─────┴─ actual delimiters └─────── escaped slash(/) character
This is a tedious job if your regex pattern contains so many occurrences of the delimiter character.
The cleaner way, of course, would be to use a different delimiter altogether. Ideally a character that does not appear anywhere inside the regex pattern, say #
– #foo[^/]+bar#i
.