Does PHP have an equivalent to this type of Python string substitution?

Question

Python has this wonderful way of handling string substitutions using dictionaries:

>>> 'The %(site)s site %(adj)s because it %(adj)s' % {'site':'Stackoverflow', 'adj':'rocks'}
'The Stackoverflow site rocks because it rocks'

I love this because you can specify a value once in the dictionary and then replace it all over the place in the string.

I've tried to achieve something similar in PHP using various string replace functions but everything I've come up with feels awkward.

Does anybody have a nice clean way to do this kind of string substitution in PHP?

• Tom Mayfield: Some of the user-contributed notes and functions in PHP's documentation for sprintf come quite close. Note: search the page for "sprintf2".
• dreftymac: The workarounds suggested here so far should be taken as a "No" answer to the question in the OP. So far none of them appear to replicate the functionality of Python, and there are expressly identified bugs strewn throughout.
• user4157124: @MarkBiek Do not include solution to question please (post a separate answer instead).

Answer 1

function subst($str, $dict){
 return preg_replace(array_map(create_function('$a', 'return "/%\\($a\\)s/";'), array_keys($dict)), array_values($dict), $str);
 }

You call it like so:

echo subst('The %(site)s site %(adj)s because it %(adj)s', array('site'=>'Stackoverflow', 'adj'=>'rocks'));

Answer 2

@Marius

I don't know if it's faster, but you can do it without regexes:

function subst($str, $dict)
{
 foreach ($dict AS $key, $value)
 {
 $str = str_replace($key, $value, $str);
 }
 return $str;
}