README

Prosthetic limbs for amputated PHP functions.

Restores the POSIX Extended regex family removed in PHP 7.0 — ereg, eregi, ereg_replace, eregi_replace, split, spliti, sql_regcase — backed by PCRE.

Install

composer require phrosthesis/ereg-pcre

Functions are registered automatically via Composer's files autoload. No setup, no use, no config. Your legacy code just works again.

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

if (ereg('^[a-z]+$', $username)) { /* ... */ }
$parts = split('[,;]', 'a,b;c');            // ['a', 'b', 'c']
$clean = ereg_replace('\s+', ' ', $input);  // collapse whitespace

setScreaming()

Silent by default. No logs, no E_USER_DEPRECATED, no noise.

Want to find the call sites? Enable screaming before the first call:

\Phrosthesis\Ereg\PcreLimb::setScreaming(true);

Every ereg() and friends will now trigger E_USER_DEPRECATED with the direct call site:

Usage of deprecated function `ereg` in /app/legacy/UserValidator.php:42

Disable:

\Phrosthesis\Ereg\PcreLimb::setScreaming(false);

Use in dev/staging only. The setting is global and static — calls made before setScreaming(true) stay silent.

Compatibility

PHP 7.x and 8.x. strict_types is supported per-file: under strict_types=1, ereg(null, 'x') throws TypeError; under 0, null coerces to ''. The package's own declare only affects internal calls.

Matches PHP 5 behavior

ereg/eregi return the match length (or 1 for empty matches), false on miss.
$regs is not touched on miss — original semantics, unlike preg_match.
ereg_replace/eregi_replace return false on error, input string on no match.
split('x', 0) means "no limit", not "one element".
sql_regcase is byte-wise and ASCII-only, like C-locale PHP 5.

Known divergences

POSIX ERE → PCRE is not 1:1. [[:alpha:]] and friends work (PCRE supports POSIX classes). \<, \> and \{, \} are not translated — in PCRE they mean literals/quantifiers. Use \b for word boundaries.
Non-ASCII in sql_regcase returns bytes as-is (é stays é, not [Éé]). This matches PHP 5's C-locale behavior; it's not UTF-aware.
Locale affects strtoupper/strtolower inside sql_regcase (tr_TR differs from C). Use setlocale(LC_CTYPE, 'C') for predictability.

Conflicts

Defines global ereg*/split*/sql_regcase. If any are already defined (another polyfill, extension, legacy code) — this package silently yields via function_exists guards. First one loaded wins.
Incompatible with phrosthesis/ereg-mbstring — Composer will refuse to install both. Intentional: one limb, one prosthesis. Pick the mbstring backend if you need POSIX ERE semantics and have ext-mbstring available.

This is not a cure

Phrosthesis is a prosthesis, not a treatment. It stops fatal errors after a PHP upgrade — nothing more. The ereg family was removed for good reasons: security, performance, maintenance.

Recommended path: install → setScreaming(true) → find call sites → migrate to preg_* → remove the package.

A prosthesis is temporary. Like any prosthesis.

License

BSD 3-Clause.

phrosthesis / ereg-pcre

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