Bug in PHP4.0b3 perl-compatible regex?

I'm trying to make a perl-compatible regular expression work properly under php 4.0b3, and am frustrated by a weird behavior. At first I thought it was a lack of understanding, but now I'm pretty convinced it's a farily serious bug. Here's my simple test file... ---- <?php print preg_replace('/<(\w+)>/','\\1', 'This <tests> removing <some> braces from a <string>'); ?> ---- And here's the result of three consecutive reloads of the page... This tests removing fro braces from a Üw,ûÀ? This tests removing fro braces from a Üøs¸ This tests removing fro braces from a k
Note that I've tried lots of permuations of this, including double quotes with lots more escaping, etc, but the behavior is the same. I'd use standard regex but what I really want is to use pcre with the /e modifier to evaluate some expressions in some strings. Anybody have any ideas why this is happening? ANy ideas for workarounds? Is this a known bug in php4b3 or am I doing something wrong? I'm running php 4.0b3 under Apache 1.3.9, under apxs.