preg_replace and eval

Hey there, We have a class that sets up a tree structure that represents an e-learning object made up of nested "components". We have a function getPropertyValue($name) which returns the property $name for the current component. Now, we want to allow the user to use something like {parent.property} in a property value, so that it can inherit parts of properties from the parent component. For example: caption = "the name of this component's parent is {parent.name}!" The following line sort of works: $retVal = preg_replace("/(.*){parent.(.*)}(.*)/e","'\\1'.\$this->parentNode->getProper tyValue('\\2').'\\3'",$retVal); However, if there are more than one string to replace it only works on the last one. So: caption = "the parent's coordinates are ({parent.left}, {parent.top})" would only return something like: "the parent's coordinates are ({parent.left}, 100)" Hope someone can help. Thanks Dan