Re: newbie question about preg_match

If I have multiple instances that match the pattern, but only want the first one, which is the best way to handle it? Putting the "U" flag seems to work, but I don't understand the full implications of using it here. preg_match("|$start(.*?)$end |Ui", $contents, $text); Alternatively, I could use preg_match_all and use $text [1]. Thanks.... John W. Holmes wrote:

From: "Al" <news@ridersite.org>

I'm trying to compose a general purpose text snip expression to extract a text segment from a string. Should this work for all reasonable cases? It seems to work for several test strings. $start= "str1"; $end= "str2"; preg_match ("|$start (.*) ? $end |i", $contents, $text); $segment= $text[1];

Looks like you have some extra spaces in there that'll mess it up. The '?' for example, is only applying to the space before it. You want preg_match("|$start(.*?)$end |i", $contents, $text); Note that this will only return one match when there could be more, depending upon your string. If you want all of them, use preg_match_all(). ---John Holmes...