php - how to replace the substrings in a string

Question

I am searching for a function in PHP to replace the substrings in a string.

Input string is

<a href="#">Test Link1</a><p class="more">something</p><a href="#">Test Link2</a> <p>some more things</p>

and output string is

&nbsp;<p class="more">something</p>&nbsp; <p>some more things</p>

Here, 'Test Link' caption is dynamic.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Use regexp

$str = '<a href="#">Test Link</a><p class="more">something</p><a href="#">Test Link</a> <p>some more things</p>';
echo preg_replace('/<a.*?</a>/is', '&nbsp;', $str);