Re: preg_match and regular expression

Fred wrote:

Hi I have problems with a regular expression. I have a html file like this: .... <body> <div>Hello</div> <br> <br> <div>somthing</div> <br> </body> .... And i want to use preg_match to get a list of all the <div> tags in the file: result: $list[0] = <div>Hello</div> $list[1] = <div>somthing</div> I have tryed this: preg_match('/.*(\<div\>.*\<\/div\>).*/', $contents, $list);

Your regex is matching EVERYTHING before and after the div. It's also matching the maximum of content between the div tags. Here's a better one: /(<div>.*?<\/div>/i 1) You don't need to escape the < and >. 2) The ? after .* makes it match a minimum of content between the div tags. 3) the /i matches case insensitive, meaning that DIV will be matched as well Note that this won't work quite right on nested div tags. -- paperCrane <Justin Patrin>