Re: how does this regular expression works

On 13 July 2011 14:04, Shahriyar Imanov <shehi@imanov.name> wrote: > \<head.*?\>(?P<head_tag_innerHTML>.*?)\<\/head\> <head.*?>(?P<head_tag_innerHTML>.*?)</head> Options: case insensitive; ^ and $ match at line breaks Match the characters “<head” literally «<head» Match any single character that is not a line break character «.*?» Between zero and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy) «*?» Match the character “>” literally «>» Match the regular expression below and capture its match into backreference with name “head_tag_innerHTML” «(?P<head_tag_innerHTML>.*?)» Match any single character that is not a line break character «.*?» Between zero and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy) «*?» Match the characters “</head>” literally «</head>» Created with RegexBuddy Escaping < > ? at the wrong time is simply a redundancy. Learning when to escape is just like learning a new language. You only need to escape anything if you need it to be a literal character. e.g. something.html vs something\.html -- Richard Quadling Twitter : EE : Zend : PHPDoc @RQuadling : e-e.com/M_248814.html : bit.ly/9O8vFY : bit.ly/lFnVea