I have string i put together from an array that created the if statement but it does not work,

here is the process to make the parameters for the if and they are finally put into $statement

$exclude = array(1=>'preg_match("/^mailto:/", $href)',
2=>'preg_match("/javascript:/", $href)',
'(preg_match("/^http:\/\/|https:\/\//", $href) && !preg_match("/".$domain."/", $href))',
'preg_match("/(\/{2,})$/", $href)',
'preg_match("/\?/", $href)',
'preg_match("/\#/", $href)',
'preg_match("/^https:\/\//", $href)');

//print_r($exclude);
foreach($exclude as $key =>$value){
if($key == count($exclude)){
$statement .= $value;
} else{
$statement .= $value.' || ';
}
}

echo $statement;

when i do this:

if($statement){

it won't work

here is the output i see from statement

preg_match("/^mailto:/", $href) || preg_match("/javascript:/", $href) || (preg_match("/^http:\/\/|https:\/\//", $href) && !preg_match("/".$domain."/", $href)) || preg_match("/(\/{2,})$/", $href) || preg_match("/\?/", $href) || preg_match("/\#/", $href) || preg_match("/^https:\/\//", $href)

Why can't this work or can it and i am missing something??