[Resolved] preg_replace syntax for my rusty brain?

[bunner_bob]

I'm trying to replace html-entitied html tags with real tags - so for instance I want to turn

<b>bold</b>

into

<b>bold</b>

and this ain't doing it:

preg_replace('/&lt;\/?(.+)&gt;/','<$0>', $string);

I only want to convert when there's a pair of lt/gt signs with something between them - so literal lt and gt signs won't convert.

I blame my extremely rusty regexp skills - would someone mind fixing me up?

Thanks

Bob

[Weedpacket]

Three things I can see:
b[/b], not b[/b]
$1, not $0
&gt;/s, not &gt;/

[bunner_bob]

Ahh thanks - that does it.

that and I forgot to put my slash (used in closing tags) inside my parentheses. So now it looks like this:

preg_replace('/&lt;(\/?.+?)&gt;/s','<$1>', $string);

[bunner_bob]

OK, this works fine:

preg_replace('/&lt;(\/?.+?)&gt;/s','<$1>', $string);

but I don't quite understand it. Why the "+?" after the period? The + means 1 or more characters, and the ? means 0 or 1 characters, so I'm not sure what that adds up to. Seems like I'd only need the +, since I'm certainly going to want at least one character between my <>.

Also not clear why there's an "s" at the end - is that so the period matches newlines within the tag?

I'm trying to refine this so I can replace all the '&quot;'s with '"' within the tag. I'm a little puzzled about the best way to go about it. Can I do it all in one pattern, or should I replace the '&quot;'s first, then do the other replace?

• Bob

[swr]

Using a ? after a + or is different from using it after a single character. It makes it non-greedy; it'll match the shortest possible string. By default + and match the longest possible string.

You're right about the s modifier. It makes the dot (as in . or .+ or . or .+? or .?) able to match newlines.