replace string but not a specific word that contains that string

Question

suppose I have a string

$string = 'this is my gal_s, not my 1_s not 2_s not 3_s';
$find = '_s';
$replace = '';

I woul like to return

"this is my gal_s, not my 1 not 2 not 3"

so the word gal_s is not affected

Is this possible?

Answer 1

You can use preg_replace with negative lookbehind like this:

$repl = preg_replace('/(?<!\bgal)_s/', '', $str);

Live Demo: http://ideone.com/GeTsv3