ereg_replace question

Okay-here's a puzzle-I want to be able to do "custom tag replacement", which would take text like the following: <cmt The Master>This is a comment</cmt> and return <i>The Master comments: This is a comment</i> I thought this would do it: ereg_replace("(<cmt (.*)>(.*)</cmt>)","<i>\\2 comments: \\3</i>",$string) but it doesn't. It also COMPLETELY fails on text that contains <b>...</b> within the \\3 section, ie: <cmt The Master>This is <b>a</b> comment</cmt> This blows up with the following results: <i>The Master>This is <b>a</b comments: comment</i> I'd really prefer this format for the tags anyway but couldn't figure it out (I suck at regexes, yeah yeah :-) <cmt "The Master">some text</cmt> Any ideas/help/enlightenment??? I'm running PHP 4.0b3 on Red Hat 6.1. --------------------------------------------- The Master (Keith Schmit) master@thehaus.net The Haus: http://www.thehaus.net/ Personal WWW: http://www.thehaus.net/~master/ --------------------------------------------- Cry HAVOC, and let slip the dogs of War. --- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar