Question about guillemet code in parser.php - Wikitech-l

4 Dec 2007

There's something about this code I don't understand:

		$fixtags = array(
			# french spaces, last one Guillemet-left
			# only if there is something before the space
			'/(.) (?=\\?|:|;|!|%|\\302\\273)/' => '\\1&nbsp;\\2',
			# french spaces, Guillemet-right
			'/(\\302\\253) /' => '\\1&nbsp;',
		);

If I'm not mistaken, the sequence \\302\\273 is actually referring to
a right guillemet (») and the second regular expression is referring
to the left guillemet («), just based on the behaviour.

But what encoding is that? What does the \\302 do? I grok regexes, but not php.

Also, what exactly is the (.) for? What situation is it trying to avoid?

Thanks,
Steve