anchor tags

[mcalpine]

hi...

i need a statement that removes anchor tags....
actually, one that replaces them with a space. the entire anchor tag ie : from <a to </a>.

i used eregi_replace ... but no matter how i write the match pattern .... it either removes all the html or none of it .....

thanks
-m

[LordShryku]

Lotsa different ways to do this. Here's one

<?
$item = "Blah, blah, blah:<a href=\"something\">Something</a>:blah, blah";
$start = explode("<a",$item);
$end = explode("</a>",$item);
$newString=$start[0].$end[1];
?>

That just splits it up into arrays. Doesn't require the small overhead of the regular expression engine.

[Weedpacket]

$text = preg_replace("!<a.*?>.*?</a>!is", ' ', $text);

To use ereg_replace that would be:

$text = eregi_replace("<a[^>]*>([^<]|<[^/]|</[^a]|</a[^>])*</a>", " ", $text);

I think, because POSIX regexps don't have ungreedy matching.

[LordShryku]

Knew some regex guy would come around with the answer....

[mcalpine]

those regexp guys are pretty smart....

i also tried a while loop..... but i like clean simple code (one statement).

where can i find a regexp tutorial?
and what is the "si" at the end of the preg_replace pattern?

thanks
-m