How to replace a regular expression with a string

$items = 'MBT-6745 MBS-5729'; 
$items = preg_replace('/MB[ST]/', 'ITEM', $items); 
echo $items; // Displays ITEM-6745 ITEM-5729e

$items = 'MBT-6745 MBS-5729, MBT-6824, and MBS-5214'; 
$pattern = '/[, ]+(and[ ]*)?/'; 
$items = preg_split($pattern, $items); 
// $items contains: 'MBT-6745', 'MBS-5729', 'MBT-6824', 'MBS-5214' 
foreach ($items as $item) { 
  echo("<li>$item</li>"); 
}

Description

• To replace a simple pattern in a string, you can also use the str_replace() and stri_replace() functions described in chapter 9.
• To split a string on a simple pattern, you can also use the explode() function described in chapter 9.