Accessing subpatterns in regex with preg_replace

Question

I have the following regex:

(<div class="dotted-highlight">(.*?)\s*){2,}<ul>

which is matching the following string:

<div class="dotted-highlight">The cover letter should include: <div class="dotted-highlight"><ul>

And I need to access The cover letter should include so I tried:

    <?php
    $textarea = '<div class="dotted-highlight">The cover letter should include: 
<div class="dotted-highlight"><ul>';
    $replacing_to = '(<div class="dotted-highlight">(.*?)\s*){2,}<ul>';
    $replacing_with = '$1<ul>';
    $textarea = preg_replace('#'.$replacing_to.'#', $replacing_with, $textarea);
    ?>

$replacing_with adds <div class="dotted-highlight"> instead of the desired text: The cover letter should include:

So the output would be:

<ul>

and Expected OUTPUT would be:

The cover letter should include: <ul>

FIDDLE:

http://codepad.org/j8EnRBFI

REGEX TESTER

http://www.regexr.com/3bkb8

@JonathanKuhn Can't do that string is much larger i only added the point that I want to make, how to match subpattern. in this case. — Adrian
– Adrian, Commented Aug 19, 2015 at 17:46
Your replacement is going to probably need to use $2 as it is the second group that is the (.*?). — Jonathan Kuhn
– Jonathan Kuhn, Commented Aug 19, 2015 at 17:49
doesn't work with $2 either it's a subpatter also tried with $1\1 and it outputted <div class="dotted-highlight"> — Adrian
– Adrian, Commented Aug 19, 2015 at 17:50
$1 is the div, which is the first group. $2 should be the .* which is what you want. — Jonathan Kuhn
– Jonathan Kuhn, Commented Aug 19, 2015 at 17:52

d0nut · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 18:29:36Z

1

Just use this and use the second capture group:

((<div class="dotted-highlight">)([^<\n]*)\s?).*?\2.*?<ul>

Regex101

3v4l

edited Aug 19, 2015 at 18:29

answered Aug 19, 2015 at 18:18

d0nut

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2 Comments

Adrian Over a year ago

It works, but not as the old one, I added {2,} because the replacement should take place if there are 2 or more patterns, right now if I remove the first <div class="dotted-highlight"> it will match the second one and it should not.

d0nut Over a year ago

@Adrian try my updated regular expression. All of the examples have been updated.

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