"Call to undefined function preg_replace()"

I was trying to run/install a PHP site and I was getting blank pages and found this error in my web server logs: "PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function preg_replace() in /path/to/file.php" This is not a terribly difficult problem and people with PHP experience are probably already yelling: "PCRE!" at the screen. :) (That stands for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions.") I only write this post because the web search of this error did not give an obvious answer in the first couple of hits.

If you're in FreeBSD, the solution is simple: install the port "devel/php5-pcre" (or "devel/php4-pcre" as appropriate). Do that from the ports tree by changing to the directory "/usr/ports/devel/php5-pcre" and typing "make install" as root. Or, you could just run "pkg_add -r php5-pcre" (as root). If it's already installed, then reinstall it from the ports tree. Then you'll probably have to restart your web server as well.

While I usually try to avoid editorializing, it seems to me like the PCRE extension ought to be part of the standard library in PHP by now! (Does PHP have a standard library? I tend to think in python. :) )

Drop down link menu, script-free!

[* Almost script-free. The value of the the 'onChange' attribute is actually a one-line script.]
This is just a tidbit, but I found it a real pain to find. So, here it is to save you the trouble. I wanted a drop-down menu in a web page, filled with links, and without using JavaScript. Why no scripts? It just seems to me like it's a simple enough thing that it shouldn't need it. But, all of the sources I found in my initial search either 1) just covered the drop down menu ("select" box) and didn't mention links, or 2) used JavaScript to implement the drop down menu. But, I finally found what I was looking for here. The site even has a little "wizard" where you can choose various settings and then generate the html. And, here is a little demonstration:

Please chooseFreeBSDPC-BSDPython

The code for which looks like this:

<form name="form1">
<select name="menu" onChange="location=document.form1.menu.options[document.form1.menu.selectedIndex].value;">
<option value=''>Please choose</option>
<option value="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</option>
<option value="http://www.pcbsd.org/">PC-BSD</option>
<option value="http://www.python.org/">Python</option>
</select>
</form>

(... For simplicity, though, I left out the "style" part of the select tag above.) The second line above runs off the viewable area, but I'll leave it like that to make copy and paste easier.