$re = '/(?:"|\G(?<!")(?!\A))(?<r>[^a"\\\\]*+(?>\\\\.[^a"\\\\]*)*+)\K(a|"(*SKIP)(*F))(?(?=((?&r)"))\3)/';
$str = 'Problem: I have thousands of documents which contains a specific character I don\'t want. E.g. "the character a". These documents contain a variety of characters, but the a\'s I want to replace "are inside double quotes or" single quotes.
I would "like to find and replace them", and I thought using Regex would be needed. I am using VSCode, but I\'m open to any suggestions.
My attempt: I was able to find the following regex to match for a specific string containing the "values inside the" ().
".*?(r).*?"
However, this only highlights the entire quote. I want to highlight the character only.
Any solution, "perhaps outside of regex", is welcome.';
$subst = "***\3";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php