The php Function Str_Ireplace
The php function str_ireplace is pivotal when it comes to handling and manipulating strings, and plays an essential role in many applications. It can be used to search and replace substrings of a string with other strings, or to simply replace the entire string with another one.
When searching for a string, the function can operate on either scalar values or arrays. If search and replace are both arrays, then each element in the first will be searched for and replaced with elements in the second. If the replace array has fewer elements than the search array, then an empty string will be used for the rest of the replacements. An optional count variable is also available, which will return the number of occurrences that were matched and replaced during that operation.
Most of the time, str_ireplace works fine when working with single-byte characters (ASCII). However, it's important to keep in mind that strings are sequences of bytes, which means that different encodings may cause problems.
Let's take a look at how this function works and what situations it should be used in, then see what we can do to use it in a more efficient manner. After all, we don't want our search and replacements to slow down the application too much.