regex help please

[morebeer]

I need to modify or replace only certain html tags from a string,
eg "<FONT face=\"(somefontname)\">"

The font face could be anything, so I need to use some sort of wildcard or regex, but I can't figure it out.

I tried

$string = "<FONT face=\"Bookman Old Style\">";
$checkstring = "<FONT";
$endstring = ">";
$string_wild = $checkstring.'%'.$endstring;
if (ereg($string_wild,$string)) echo "found";

but it didn't work.

Can anyone help?
Thanks
Caz

[xblue]

I'd really recommend get into the basics. there is an article here on php builder, and the PCRE pages in the manual list all the basic elements regex patterns may have, too.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/pcre.pattern.syntax.php
(you need to scroll down a little).

if your (somefontname) would be letters only:
[a-zA-Z]+
or if it could be anything but the ending doublequote
[^\"]+
most wildcard-like is the dot which matches almost everything, however it is somewhat tricky to use (often matches more than you would want it to).

[morebeer]

thanks for your help.

i also found two excellent easy to follow tutorials

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/52/0.php
http://www.webreference.com/programming/php/regexps/

caz