problem with ereg_replace

I'm trying to replace all relative links in a string like: str$="<a href="jan_may2000/files.html">" to str$="<a href="http://myhost.com/jan_may2000/files.html">" I don't want to change any links that begining with http or mailto links. my code is: <? // change all relative links to include base url $url = "news/"; $fnd = "a href=\"[^http)(mailto)#]"; $str_new = ereg_replace($fnd, "a href=\"" . $url . "", $str_old); $news_body = $str_new; ?> $str_old has the complete html body of the page (all content between <BODY> tags), so none of the other html must be touched It works, EXCEPT that $str_new returns what I want but strips the first character after href. Using the example given above: IF str$="<a href="jan_may2000/files.html">" after using the ereg function it becomes : str$="<a href="http://myhost.com/an_may2000/files.html">" ^^ notice the missing character. What I'm doing wrong?