pattern matching help

[sgs]

I need to extract a string between a particular string pattern.
e.g.
$string = "blah blah <sgs; the string to be extracted ;sgs> blah blah blah";

1. I tried using

eregi ( "<sgs;(.*);sgs>", $string ,$regs) --- match not found

2. however when i tried

eregi ( "<sgs;(.*)", $string ,$regs)

This gives me the match and then $regs[1] contains string as
$regs[1] = "<sgs; the string to be extracted ;sgs> blah blah blah";

Now I tried using
eregi ( "(.*);sgs>", $string ,$regs)

This is not giving me any match (when I can actually see the match )
Basically now what i need is the part of string till the ';sgs>' part.

Can someone help me in this ?
Thanks in advance.

[Weedpacket]

Haven't you posted this question before? Those tags look familiar...

Ah, indeed you have.

[bernouli]

try this

<?php
$string = "blah blah <sgs; the string to be extracted ;sgs> blah blah blah"; 
eregi ( "<sgs;(.*);sgs>", $string ,$regs) ;
echo $regs[1];
?>