PHP - Strange thing with simple preg_replace

Question

I have this array:

'@(.*?)<div>(.*?)</div>(.*?)@i' => 'ok'

And I am using preg_replace to return the value "ok" from some string.

The problem is that when I do the preg_replace, the last (.*?) isn't "detected".

Example

I have the string: test1<div>test2</div>test3

And with that array and preg_replace, it would return oktest3. Why isn't test3 replaced?

Sebastian Paaske Tørholm · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-28 17:44:11Z

4

The problem is, that .*? is a non-greedy match, and thus tries to match as little as possible.

If you want it to match from the beginning and to the end of the string, use a ^ and $ to anchor the regex to the beginning and end, like so:

'@^(.*?)<div>(.*?)</div>(.*?)$@i' => 'ok'

answered Jun 28, 2013 at 17:44

Sebastian Paaske Tørholm

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2 Comments

Sebastian Paaske Tørholm Over a year ago

@AfonsoMatos: Happy to help. Remember to accept my answer, if you feel it solves your problem. I can recommend checking out regular-expressions.info - it's a pretty good source of information.

Afonso Matos Over a year ago

Ok, thx for the website. I didn't accept it yet, because I get some error telling me to try in 6 minutes..

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