Regular Expression Problem

[intermediate]

I'm using regular expressions to allow users on a message board to type certain commands to do different things for example they type /msg username message in order to private message a user.

when i try to use regular expressions to set up the variables i need the variable for message to be anything.

/msg coolguy hello wuts up! =)

$message = eregi_replace("(/msg) ([_a-zA-Z0-9-]+) ()", "\3", $string);

variable \2 is the username they are sending the private message to, but i want variable //3 to not have any criteria to meet, so it can be any character in the entire world, no restrictions. like username is restricted to letters, numbers, underscores and dashes. how do i create the variable \3 correctly because it doesn't work that way.

please help! thnx!

[intermediate]

plz help

[intermediate]

help plz

[BigToach]

use preg its faster.

$message = preg_replace('/(.?)\/msg (.+?)( )(.+?)$/i','\4',$str);
$send_to = preg_replace('/(.?)\/msg (.+?)( )(.+?)$/i','\2',$str);

itd be easier to use preg_match_all with the matches array and faster to but that will work as well. $message is the text to send to the person $send_to