RE: regex question

I think there maybe a few ways to do this... One is [^@]@[^@] That basically says "find me the pattern where one non-at symbol is followed by an at symbol followed by another non-at symbol" So if you do <?php $string = "@ one more T@@me for @ and i@ the Bl@@dy n@nsense"; $pattern = '/[^@](@)[^@]/'; $numMatch = preg_match_all($pattern, $string, $matches); echo "numMatch: $numMatch\n"; print_r ($matches); ?> numMatch: 3 Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => @ [1] => i@ [2] => n@n ) [1] => Array ( [0] => @ [1] => @ [2] => @ ) ) Well, where that fails is when you have @'s at the beginning or end of the string and that's easy enough to do.. So that would mean three searches... There's probably a way to integrate them into one without loosing integrity, but it depends on what kind of regexp libs you have, I reckon. It also depends on what you really are trying to do with this search. Consider str_replace, strpos and strtr as well. Thanks, Carl -----Original Message----- From: Al [mailto:news@ridersite.org] Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 3:54 PM To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: regex question What pattern can I use to match ONLY single occurrences of a character in a string. e.g., "Some text @ and some mo@@re and mor@e, etc @@@. I only want the two occurrences with a single occurrence of "@". @{1} doesn't work; there are 4 matches. Thanks....