String /pattern formatting extraction question

Hi to all, I have the following pattern for a string: text1 /ptext2 /otext3 Now, I want to extract the text by "patterns" from this string by the following rule: no pattern -> text1 (what is before /o or /p) /p -> text2 (what is after /p) /o -> text3 (what is after /o) The order betweeen /o and /p can be switched, so there is no rule that /p is before /o. How can I do this? I tried ereg but no success. Andy.