Regular Expression Help

[stovellp]

I have the following code, and when I run it I get the error:
Warning: eregi() [function.eregi]: REG_BADRPT:trepetition-operator operand invalid

	while ( eregi("(<TD align=CENTER BGCOLOR=#BBFFCC>.*?<\/TD>)", $String, $Regs) )
	{
		$String = str_replace($Regs[1].$Regs[2].$Regs[3], "", $String);	
		echo "horse: ".$Regs[1]."<br />\n";
	}

I get the error because of the ".?" part in the middle of the eregi function call. Whats wrong with it?! http://gnosis.cx/publish/programming/regular_expressions.html says to use .? so its not greedy, so why do I get an error when I try to use it?

I hate regular expressions 🙁 Thanks for any help, its really appreciated.

~ Paul

[Weedpacket]

It's because the syntax used by ereg and its cognates does not support ungreedy matching (as noted in a nice blue box on the [man]regex[/man] manual page). See that page (and that box) for a solution