You can use a regular expression for this, or you can make your own function that performs a sequence one letter at a time. The regex is used here:
preg_replace('/[aoieu]/', '[aoieu]?', $input);
( , $search char , - strpos , , ):
function safe_replace($search, $replace, $subject) {
if(!is_array($search)) {
$search = array($search);
}
$result = '';
$len = strlen($subject);
for($i = 0; $i < $len; $i++) {
$c = $subject[$i];
if(in_array($c, $search)) {
$c = $replace;
}
$result .= $c;
}
return $result;
}
safe_replace(array('a', 'o', 'i', 'e', 'u'), '[aoieu]?', 'black');