Greedy

[Anon]

Appreciate if you could help me with this regep problem that is driving
me crazy.

I have a string $str and I want to grab the word APPLE:

...
...
I like APPLES !! </B></FONT>
...
...

Then I code my regep in php:
eregi("APPLES(.*)</B></FONT>",$str,$store);

However I got MORE than APPLES in $store as there are tonnes of
</B></FONT> elsewhere in $str !!

How do I limit the regep so that it stop after the first </B></FONT> ??

Appreciate your prompt reply

rgds.
Zon Hisham

[Anon]

from man perlre:
By default, a quantified
subpattern is "greedy", that
is, it will match as many times
as possible (given a particular
starting location) while still
allowing the rest of the
pattern to match. If you want
it to match the minimum number
of times possible, follow the
quantifier with a "?". Note
that the meanings don't change,
just the "greediness":

       *?     Match 0 or more times
       +?     Match 1 or more times
       ??     Match 0 or 1 time
       {n}?   Match exactly n times
       {n,}?  Match at least n times
       {n,m}? Match at least n but not 
              more than m times

Is this the problem you are having? I don't
know for sure that the PHP ereg functions
follow this part of regex matching, but
http://php.easydns.com/manual/ref.regex.php
seems to imply that PHP does follow the
standard regex rules. Try it.

[Anon]

Nathan, thx for the explanation.
However, I haven't tested it yet, too much workload lately.

Hoping to give it a shot within this week. Thanks again.

rgds.
Zon

[Anon]

It doesn't seem to work in php3. Any other ideas?

[Anon]

Why do you need the (.*)?

just do:
eregi("(APPLES)",$str,$store);

alex wrote:

It doesn't seem to work in php3. Any other ideas?