regex help

[szz]

Hi!
I have to match something like this:
...fixed text...abc...

Note that between "fixed text" and "abc" could be "ab" or "a".

Please post me your ideas. Thank you!

[bradgrafelman]

So you want a pattern than will match something, only you don't know what it will be?

What is constant here? Is "fixed text" and "abc" always going to appear in those positions? If not, what are you trying to match?? Are you trying to find if "abc" occurs sometime after "fixed text" ?

I don't get what you're trying to match, and what the structure of the string is.

[szz]

10x for the reply.

I have to match the red:
constantstring...anything here(even ab or a)...abcsubstringtomatch<

So the goal is to match the substring begining with "abc" and ending with a special character(let's say '<'), but only if occurs after "constantstring".

[bradgrafelman]

I don't have access to my server to test this at the moment, but try this for a pattern:

$pattern = '/abc([^<]+)/';
// OR
$pattern = '/abc(.+)</';