Need some Regex help...

TheDiave

I know there are dozens of reference materials on the web for working with regular expressions, but I've looked at a lot, and still haven't been able to figure out a solution for my problem.

This is the text I'm trying to work with:

[TAG1=Poster]Their comments.[/TAG2]
Someone else's comments.
[TAG1=Another Poster]More comments.[/TAG2]

I'm trying to extract the name after "TAG1=", and the comments that appear between "[TAG1=name]" and "[/TAG2]".

I'm really baffled by this. :bemused: If anyone can offer a solution, it'd be greatly appreciated!

anakadote

try this:

$tag = [TAG1=Poster]Their comments.[/TAG2];

$name = explode(']', $tag);
$name1= ltrim($name[0], '[TAG1=');//Poster
$name2 = rtrim($name[1], '[/TAG2');//Their comments.

or some derivation of

Weedpacket

/\[TAG1=(.+?)\](.*?)\[TAG2\]/

Chuck that into [man]preg_match[/man] or [man]preg_match_all[/man] and have a look at the array of matches that results. Note the \ before the brackets, 'cos brackets have a special meaning in regexps and so need to be escaped if you want them to be interpreted as just brackets. Note also the ungreedy ? operator; if you're using ereg(), you'll be having trouble because you can't use it.

dnast

^ Wow, I've actually witnessed you making a mistake. 🆒

Weedpacket forgot the slash on tag 2 (which will have to be escaped, as well).

/\[TAG1=(.+?)\](.*?)\[\/TAG2\]/

Weedpacket

Yup; I did leave that out - I guess I was thinking "why else would there be TAG1 and TAG2?"