Eregi grab first occurrence

[eggradio]

I am trying to use eregi to parse through an HTML file. The problem is that it grabs too much. I want it to start grabbing at $startgrab and stop grabbing at the first occurrence of $stopgrab. Instead it stops grabbing at the last occurrence of $stopgrab.

$this->startpat = "<div id=\"expo\">";
$this->endpat = "[^;]</div>";

eregi("($this->startpat)" . "(.*)" . "($this->endpat)", $this->inputdata, $this->out)

[[deleted]]

(.*) matches on anything, including the string you want to stop grabbing on.
Change this to match "everything but what you want to stop grabbing in"