Are regular expressions necessary for achieving text highlighting in PHP?

Regular expressions are not necessary for achieving text highlighting in PHP. One way to achieve text highlighting is by using the str_replace function to replace the text to be highlighted with HTML markup for highlighting. This allows you to easily highlight specific words or phrases in a string of text without the need for complex regular expressions.

$text = "This is a sample text to demonstrate text highlighting in PHP.";
$highlighted_word = "sample";

$highlighted_text = str_replace($highlighted_word, "<span style='background-color: yellow;'>$highlighted_word</span>", $text);

echo $highlighted_text;