What does $2$3 mean? [closed]

Question

Came across a line in some Wordpress code I am modifying and just flat out don't know what the $2.$3 is? Maybe it's a PHP thing that I just never learned? Can anyone explain this to me?

Here's the plugin I'm modifying:

<?php
    /*
    Plugin Name: Pinterest Plugin
    Plugin URI: http://www.WordPressPinterestPlugin.com
    Description: Display a Pinterest "Pin It" button on top of your images, only when people move their mouse over the image.
    Version: 1.0 
    Author: Promotioner.com
    Author URI: http://www.WordPressPinterestPlugin.com    
    /*============================================================================================================ */    

    class pin_success
    {
        function pin_success() 
        {
            add_filter('the_content',  array('pin_success', 'nosn_pinterest'));
        }
        function nosn_pinterest($content) {
            global $post;
            $posturl = urlencode(get_permalink()); //Get the post URL
            $pindiv = '<div class="sn_pinterest">';
            $pinurl = '<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url='.$posturl.'&media=';
            $pindescription = '&description='.urlencode(get_the_title());
            $pinfinish = '" target="_blank" class="sn_pin"></a>';
            $pinend = '</div>';
            $pattern = '/<img(.*?)src="(.*?).(bmp|gif|jpeg|jpg|png)"(.*?) \/>/i'; 
            $replacement = $pindiv.$pinurl.'$2.$3'.$pindescription.$pinfinish.'<img$1src="$2.$3" $4 />'.$pinend;
            $content = preg_replace( $pattern, $replacement, $content );                    
            return $content;
        }   
    }    



    $successnexus = new pin_success;


    wp_enqueue_style('sn_pinterest', plugins_url('sn_pinterest.css', __FILE__ ));
?>

Answer 1

Agree this isn't really a WordPress question.

However, I believe the $1, $2, and $3 refer to the capture groups determined by the (.*?) wildcards. Now, regex is totally voodoo to me so I'm sorry I can't explain it 100%. However if you look at the $pattern definition:

$pattern = '/<img(.*?)src="(.*?).(bmp|gif|jpeg|jpg|png)"(.*?) \/>/i'; 

Then $1 is the match immediately following the opening <img.

$2 is the image's src attribute

$3 is probably anything that comes after the src attribute

$4 doesn't look defined to me