||- Regular Expression Question

[sfullman]

Hi there,

I want to select a <select> field from a remote form using regular expressions. If I did a regular expression on the following HTML code...

<select name=name>
<option value=1>1</option>
<option value=2>2</option>
</select>
...any old HTML code here
<select name=name_two>
<option value=1>1</option>
<option value=2>2</option>
</select>

... using "(<select[^{>]>).(</select>)"} .. I'm going to wind up grabbing BOTH select elements because PHP is "greedy" for the largest string.

What I really need to say in regular expression language is, "find <select then text, then a '>', then any string EXCEPT </select>, then finally </select>."

I know this means [^a] means any character but a, for example, but how do I specify "a string, then any string except a specific string, then the string"?

The answer is probably easy I'm just not thinking of it right now.

[van__]

This seems to work...
<?

$select = '<select name="something">\n';
$select .= '<option value="foo">foo\n';
$select .= '<option value="bar">bar\n';
$select .= '</select>\n';

preg_match_all('/(<select+\s?(.[^{>\n<])>)+\n?(.)\n?(<\/select>+)/ism',$select,$selectArray);}

print_r($selectArray);

?>

will output the following array....
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => <select name="something">\n<option value="foo">foo\n<option value="bar">bar\n</select>
)

[1] => Array
    (
        [0] => <select name="something">
    )

[2] => Array
    (
        [0] => name="something"
    )

[3] => Array
    (
        [0] => \n<option value="foo">foo\n<option value="bar">bar\n
    )

[4] => Array
    (
        [0] => </select>
    )

)

[releasedj]

You can also try this:

/(<select[^{>]>(?:.?)<\/select>)/ixsSe}

Kelvin