preg_match / ereg and the null byte

Hi all; Does anyone know why preg_match() or ereg() both seem to die, somewhat, when they receive a byte of value 0x00? I have a snippet of code that goes like: <? $string = pack("H*", "52616e646f6d4956cf4a88446ea3c6e1"); #ereg("^RandomIV(.{2})(.*)$", $string, $match); preg_match("/^RandomIV(.{2})(.*)$/", $string, $match); echo "2 bytes go: ".($match[1])."\n\n"; echo "6 bytes go: ".($match[2])."\n\n"; ?> So, (please forgive the horrible text), $match[1] is "ÏJ" and $match[2] becomes "^Dn£Æá", which is expected and works fine. However, if I change $string to be: pack("H*", "52616e646f6d4956cf4a88446e00c6e1"); -- (the A3, 3rd byte from the end, is changed to a 00) Then $match[1] remains the same, ie. "ÏJ", but $match[2] becomes "^Dn" - the last 3 bytes (or whatever appeared after the 0x00 (as well as the 0x00 itself) are snipped from the end of the string. Is there something that'll explain this, or some other way around the problem? The process needs to work with data containing the null byte, unfortunatley I can't just snip it out. Thanks for any help anyone can provide! Steven Fletcher stevenf@shellnet.co.uk