Foul Words

[felicks]

Does anyone know of a way to search the contents of an input text box to find certain words? I want to identify and blank-out swear words that users might put into a form on my site.

I am using Flash MX 2004, but have no real knowledge of the changes made in Actionscript 2.

Hope you can help,
Felix.

[nunomira]

hi,

code:

---

function replace(origStr, searchStr, replaceStr)

{

	var tempStr = "";

	var startIndex = 0;

	if (searchStr == "") {

		return origStr;

	}

	if (origStr.indexOf(searchStr) != -1) {

		while ((searchIndex = origStr.indexOf(searchStr, startIndex)) != -1) {

			tempStr += origStr.substring(startIndex, searchIndex);

			tempStr += replaceStr;

			startIndex = searchIndex + searchStr.length;

		}

		return tempStr + origStr.substring(startIndex);

	} else {

		return origStr;

	}

}

var old_string = "this is the old string";

var new_string = replace (old_string, "old", "new");

trace(new_string); // this is the new string

---

[taken from this post]

[felicks]

could you explain that code to me please? I'm afraid I'm one of theose people who likes to understand what i'm writing

Thanks, Felix

[jbum]

The following script does the same thing, and perhaps can be explained more quickly, since it's shorter.

code:

---

str = "this is a line of hellish text";

str = str.split('hell').join('heck');

trace(str);

---

str.split('hell') creates an array of strings using 'hell' as a delimiter. So all the parts of the string around the word 'hell' are retained. Then join('heck') joins those fragments back together, using 'heck' as a delimiter.

So ultimately, it replaces any occurance of 'hell' with 'heck'. To use it with multiple words:

str = str.split('hell').join('heck');
str = str.split('tit').join('tat');
str = str.split('potatoe').join('potato');

etc.

Now, having demonstrated it, I should mention that writing a good censorship script is harder than this. There are two problems: being too inclusive (as this script is) and not being inclusive enough. It is very difficult to find a balance between the two.

This script is too inclusive. It replaces the word 'shell' with 'sheck'.

You could fix that by modifying the script to require spaces before and after the word, but then you would also need to check if the string begins with hell or ends with hell, and what about punctuation?

Finally, after you fix that problem, you'll find it's a simple matter for a user to type h.e.l.l. and get past it.

Eventually, you will find that you need a more elaborate algorithm that breaks the string apart, removes all punctuation, keeps track of where the word boundaries are, accounts for upper/lower case, etc.

Then, once you've done that, your users will start using other letters, like so:

h.e.[.[.
fvck
c0cksvcker
etc.

Also, you'll find that you need to prevent it from turning "shell" to "sheck", (cause this makes users mad) but at the same time you probably DO want to turn "sfvck" into "sfudge" (cause "sfvck" also makes users mad), but if you use a uniform algorithm, there is no difference between the two.

In general, you might find it easier to avoid censoring smaller words, like "tit" because they tend to be used as fragments of larger words, whereas "fvck" isn't a fragment of anything.
"fvck" is unique in that way, however, many other swearwords (such as tit, ass, shiit) commonly occur as part of other words.

Do you have a headache yet?

Good luck...

[ChicoMendez]

simple but super solution jbum!!

[-Blue-]

how do you make it work with a text feild like:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
this.text_box.text =this.text_box.text.split('poo').join('faeces');
}

or something??