How can regular expressions be used to differentiate between different types of href attributes when replacing links in PHP?

Regular expressions can be used to differentiate between different types of href attributes by matching specific patterns in the HTML code. For example, you can use a regular expression to match href attributes that start with "http://" or "https://" to identify external links, while matching href attributes that start with "#" or "/" to identify internal links. This way, you can replace only the necessary links based on their type.

// Sample code to replace different types of href attributes in HTML using regular expressions
$html = '<a href="http://www.example.com">External Link</a><a href="#section">Internal Link</a>';

// Replace external links
$html = preg_replace('/<a\s+href="https?:\/\/[^"]*">/', '<a href="new_external_link">', $html);

// Replace internal links
$html = preg_replace('/<a\s+href="(?:#|\/)[^"]*">/', '<a href="new_internal_link">', $html);

echo $html;