note 80081 deleted from function.preg-match by tularis

Note Submitter: joseph at no-spam dot xylex dot net ---- A quick example of using named recursion and negative lookaheads for finding the outermost div. You can use this same idea for any type of nested tags. <?php $sample = "lead in text to capture <div> outside div text <div> inner div text <div> deep nested text </div> </div> bottom of outside div text </div> end of text to capture"; preg_match( '#^(?P<a>.*?)(?P<b>.?<div((.(?!<div))|(?P>b))*?.</div>)(?P<c>.*?)$#s', $sample, $matches); echo "<pre>"; var_dump($matches); //$matches['a'] == "lead in text to capture" //$matches['b'] == the outermost <div> and child contents (with a leading space) //$matches['c'] == " end of text to capture" ?>