preg_replace, possible recursion?

Kristopher

I'm using the following code to create bb-style list tags. However, I want to try to make it be able to have a list tag within

<?php

$text = '[list]
    [*] 1[/*]
    [*] 2[/*]
    [*] 3
    [list]
        [*]a[/*]
        [*]b[/*]
        [*]c[/*]
    [/list]
    [/*]
    [*] 8[/*]
[/list]';

echo listtag($text);

function listtag($text){
    $text = preg_replace('/\[list\](.*?)\[\/list\]/siU', '<ul>$1</ul>', $text);
    $text = preg_replace('/\[\*\](.*)\[\/\*\]/', '<li>$1</li>', $text);

    return $text;
}

?>

How could I modify this code to get it to work?

Kristopher

I can get my desired result by looping until there are no matches found, but there has to be a way to take care of it within the expression.

Anyone?

Weedpacket

Regexps can't count. The syntax isn't that sophisticated (but see the paragraphs in the Pattern Syntax section of the manual entitled "Recursive patterns". Note that this section of the manual was lifted from Perl's documentation, where it is described as "experimental".