Re: Simple RegEx to pull out content between 2 markers

Jon Bennett wrote:

Hi, I need to grab the what's between 2 markers in a Textile / html string, but my regex skills aren't all that hot. The text I have is: <OPEN_MAIN_COLUMN> h3. Article Content Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. p(image). !/app/image/1/large! Caption p(image). !/app/image/24/large! drunken jonty <CLOSE_MAIN_COLUMN> <OPEN_LEFT_COLUMN> h3. Article Content !/app/image/7/thumb! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. <CLOSE_LEFT_COLUMN> <CLOSE_RIGHT_COLUMN> h3. Article Content Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. * Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. * Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. * Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. <CLOSE_RIGHT_COLUMN> I'd like to grab the contents of left, right and main individually so I can place them in separate form fields. Any help greatly appreciated. I'm certain this is a cinch for people who use regex often.

It's really not that hard if you use three separate expressions: $left = preg_match('/<OPEN_LEFT_COLUMN>(.*)<CLOSE_LEFT_COLUMN>/is', $text, $matches); $right = preg_match('/<OPEN_RIGHT_COLUMN>(.*)<CLOSE_RIGHT_COLUMN>/is', $text, $matches); $main = preg_match('/<OPEN_MAIN_COLUMN>(.*)<CLOSE_MAIN_COLUMN>/is', $text, $matches); And then, IIRC, the content you're after will be in $matches[1]. -- Richard Heyes Employ me: http://www.phpguru.org/cv