strip slashes from beginning and end of string in one expression

PHP list. This is another regular expression type of question. The very handy PHP function trim() takes excess white space off the beginning and end of a string. I'd like to be able to do the same thing, except instead of white spaces, trim excess slashes: / So for example, all of these: /this/that/ /this/that this/that/ ////////this/that//////////// ... become: this/that There is also the chance of more than one slash occurring inside the desired text: /this/that/this/that/ So that would also need to be accounted for. The above example should become: this/that/this/that I think I need to use preg_replace() for this, but, as ever, regular expressions completely throw me. If I'm not mistaken, "#^/*#" should get me the first slash of the string, and more if there are more. And "#*/$#" should get me the last slash of the string, and more if there are more. Can I test for the first and last slash in the same expression? I think I either need something between the two that says "ignore what's in the middle", or and and/or statement to say "replace if this occurs at the end, or at the beginning, or both". I've looked around and can't seem to find a way of connecting these in the same search. However, I'm sure that is because I'm not familiar enough with regular expressions to know what I'm looking at. How would I connect "#^/*#" and "#*/$#" into one regular expression? Thank you for your time and advice. -- Dave M G Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Kernel 2.6.17.7 Pentium D Dual Core Processor PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2