ereg() problem

Hello php list; I am having trouble with ereg(). The following is the problem code $x = ereg("<route name='$to' x='../(.*)/in' rec='.*' />", $get_route, $m); testing $route I get: $route = $m[1]; print $route.'<br>'; jk/in' rec='a_378e6dc4.xml' /> (out put of print) jk is all I am looking for but is it greed that is missing the forward slash and the single quote? It seems like every time I do this I have to monkey around with it until I get what I want. I have even changed the formatting of files just so a regular expression would work without this sort of trial and error. Is there a way I can turn off greed in php's regex? I am using php v5.1.2 with Apache 1.3.34 Thanks in advance. JK