regular expression question

[ptbsG_Man]

hello,

I am having a problem with wording my regex right.. i have this

"#[code(=)??(.?)??](.?)[/code]#se"

and it works but what i need is the =text to be optional but if in there the = be required so like

 or [code=php] not [code php] or [codephp] but i dont want the = returned in the backreference.. im using "'$2<div>'.highlight_string(str_replace('<br />','',stripslashes('$3')), true).'</div>'" to display the above regex but the = is not required in the optional section using the above code ... 

and because i just started with regex im lost and if you got lost with my description of the prolem p[lease ask me 

thanks,
Don

[xblue]

I do not completely understand the pattern you posted (it were the doubled ? that surprised me, do they have a special meaning I do not know yet, or are they do indicate "don't know what to do here"?) but I hope I more or less understood what you want.

Is it like: if there is some optional text, the = befor that is required - so only both parts together are optional, but the = itself within this subpattern is not?

that would be:
code(=.*?)?

then, to keep it out of the part reused in the backreference, add additional parentheses:
code(=(.*?))? and increase the number used in the backreference by one.

HTH

[ptbsG_Man]

sweet that works perfect

the ?? is according to http://www.regularexpressions.info/reference.html a good site i found last night has

Makes the preceding item optional. Lazy, so the optional item is excluded in the match if possible. This construct is often excluded from documentation because of its limited use.

thanks
Don

[xblue]

Doh, ungreedy matching! It is so common in the form of *? that I actually forgot that it could be applied to other quantifiers as well.