Maximum Execution Time and pereg_replace

Hey, A nasty bug has been bothering me for a while now, and I haven't exactly been able to figure it out. I've written a rather complex news/webloging script that uses it's on 'style' templates. I process various tags within the templates to insert the news article specific info. Anways, I use preg_replace to do some of the tag/value swaping, and I think it may be the cause of a maximum execution time error (which I believe translated to a 100% CPU & PHP process hang in windows). Here is some example code (quite cut down for simplicity): $out_text = $this->raw_modify_style; $out_text = ereg_replace("<!\\-\\-#title#\\-\\->", "$title", $out_text); $out_text = ereg_replace("<!\\-\\-#input_body#\\-\\->", '<textarea cols="25" rows="7" name="input_body">' . $this->SQLWrap->GetField("Body") . '</textarea>', $out_text); . . . $out_text = preg_replace("/<!--#MODIFY#-->((.|\\n|\\r)*)?<!--#\/MODIFY#-->/", ($step == 3)?"\\1" : "", $out_text); Explanation: $this->raw_modify_style is the raw text from the style template loaded earlier... could be something similar to http://www.brentc.com/inertianews/modify_style_sample.html (note it's the SOURCE of that file (with added tags) that's important here). The second line is an example of a quick ereg_replace I use to replace one of my tags with a value. The third is similar to the second, but replaces the <!--#input_body#--> tag with an html <textarea> with the contents of the news articles body. The fourth line is the line that is referenced in the maximum execution error. The idea is, is that the 1 style file is for a multi-stepped (in the end user's eyes) process, and if the it's the 3rd step ($step==3), then I want to use the stuff from the style file that is enclosed in the <!--#MODIFY#--> and <!--#/MODIFY#--> tags. Now, this solution works fine and dandy I'd say maybe 75% of the time. But it seems whenever the content of the article gets to a certain length, this craps out, and just hangs on the preg_replace. What I'm assuming is that $out_text is becoming too large... and therefore preg_replace can't handle it. But it doesn't seem to be a matter of it just taking longer and longer, because once the article is made a little bit shorter, the whole thing runs quite quickly (no where near approaching the 30sec max execution time). I've found that by moving the last line above the first line (thereby eliminating any style tags that aren't needed, and getting the preg_replace in there before $out_text becomes large with the replacement of style tags) the error almost goes away.... but I feel this solution will limit the complexity of the style files, as eventually, the $out_text (before ANY replacements have been made) may exceed the size that preg_replace can handle. Anyways, so thats my long explanation. Can anyone lend any help? BTW- the full source of this can be found at http://www.brentc.com/inertianews , it's located in inertianews_main.php thanks in advance! -brent -- Brent Charbonneau -- inertianews@brentc.com | www.brentc.com/inertianews