regular expression not

[teguh123]

[^<].* would match all strings that do not contain <

How do we match all strings that do not contain "</"

[NogDog]

The simplest thing would be:

if(strpos($string, '</',) === FALSE)
{
   // no "</" in the string
}

If you really want to do it with a regex, just negate the function call:

if(!preg_match('#</#', $string))
{
   // no "</" in the string
}

[teguh123]

What about if I want to match the last </

So, a </ followed by all characters that doesn't contain </

[paulnaj]

Hi,

Regex's are good for lots of things, but some seemingly straightforward searches turn out to be really awkward.

Try strrpos.

P

[NogDog]

<?php
header("Content-Type: text/plain");
$text = "<b>test 1</b> <i>test 2</i> <em>test 3</em> the end.";
if(preg_match('#</(.(?!</))*$#', $text, $matches))
{
   echo $matches[0];
}
else
{
   echo "Not found";
}

Output:

</em> the end.

[paulnaj]

Hey NogDog,

That's really nice.

Can I ask what this part ...

.(?!</)

... is doing? I just can't see it 🙁

Paul

[NogDog]

The "(?!" is the start of a look-ahead negative assertion, which is ended by the closing parenthesis. So ".(?!</)" means any character (the dot) which is not followed by "</".

Believe me, I didn't think of that right away -- I had a feeling there was some way to do this with assertions, but it took several wrong turns before I came up with that one.

[paulnaj]

That's a real beauty!

Gonna add that one to box o' tricks!

Hat's off!

P.

[Kudose]

Yeah man, I am bookmarking this.

Good one NogDog.

[NogDog]

Now the big question: is that what the OP was really looking for?

[teguh123]

GENIUS

Thanks a lot.

Wow....