Regular Expression Help

[AliceH]

I'm stuck, can't figure this out 🙁

I want to go through a bunch of code and get rid of 2 comments, and anything in between the comments:

$code = 'foo

          <!--Start-->
          foo
          bar
          <!--End-->

          bar';

This is what I came up with:

$code = preg_replace("'<!--Start-->(.*)<!--End-->'", "", $code);

It works if the comments and in between code are on a single line, but since they are on multiple lines it doesn't 🙁

[bubblenut]

From the php manual entry on pcre modifiers

m (PCRE_MULTILINE)

By default, PCRE treats the subject string as consisting of a single "line" of characters (even if it actually contains several newlines). The "start of line" metacharacter (^) matches only at the start of the string, while the "end of line" metacharacter ($) matches only at the end of the string, or before a terminating newline (unless D modifier is set). This is the same as Perl.

When this modifier is set, the "start of line" and "end of line" constructs match immediately following or immediately before any newline in the subject string, respectively, as well as at the very start and end. This is equivalent to Perl's /m modifier. If there are no "\n" characters in a subject string, or no occurrences of ^ or $ in a pattern, setting this modifier has no effect. 

s (PCRE_DOTALL)

If this modifier is set, a dot metacharacter in the pattern matches all characters, including newlines. Without it, newlines are excluded. This modifier is equivalent to Perl's /s modifier. A negative class such as [^a] always matches a newline character, independent of the setting of this modifier. 

so what you need is

$code = preg_replace("'<!--Start-->(.*)<!--End-->'ms", "", $code);

HTH
Bubble

[AliceH]

dude you rock