regex: before and after the match

[meltedown]

I want to match a table and also capture the parts before and after the
table:
preg_match_all("|(.*)(<table.*table>)(.*)|",$text, $parts);
But of course it doesn't work, presumably because the first .* is
greedy. I tried adding an ? but that doesn't work either. How do I do
this ?

[Garp]

"meltedown" <fa**@fake.net> wrote in message
news:Ec***********************@news.easynews.com.. .

I want to match a table and also capture the parts before and after the
table:
preg_match_all("|(.*)(<table.*table>)(.*)|",$text, $parts);
But of course it doesn't work, presumably because the first .* is
greedy. I tried adding an ? but that doesn't work either. How do I do
this ?

You might be confused at the results because they contain the table HTML.
But you were right first time.

$text="|before<table>stuff goes here</table>after|";
print htmlspecialchars($text)."<br>";
preg_match_all("|(.*?)(<table.*table>)(.*)|",$text , $parts);

print("Before: ".$parts[1][0]);
print "<br>Inner: ";
print htmlspecialchars($parts[2][0]);
print "<br>";
print("After: ".$parts[3][0]);

Results:
|before<table>stuff goes here</table>after|
Before: |before
Inner: <table>stuff goes here</table>
After: after|
Isn't this what you wanted?

HTH

Garp

[Chung Leong]

"meltedown" <fa**@fake.net> wrote in message
news:Ec***********************@news.easynews.com.. .

I want to match a table and also capture the parts before and after the
table:
preg_match_all("|(.*)(<table.*table>)(.*)|",$text, $parts);
But of course it doesn't work, presumably because the first .* is
greedy. I tried adding an ? but that doesn't work either. How do I do
this ?

Yes, you need to make the first .* non-greedy by appending a ? (probably the
second .* too). The reason why it doesn't work is because you're not using
the s modifier, without which . doesn't match newline characters. Make sense
to use the i modifier as well for case insensitivity. And preg_match()
should suffice in this case, since you'll at most have one match.

[meltedown]

Garp wrote:

"meltedown" <fa**@fake.net> wrote in message
news:Ec***********************@news.easynews.com.. .

I want to match a table and also capture the parts before and after the
table:
preg_match_all("|(.*)(<table.*table>)(.*)|",$text, $parts);
But of course it doesn't work, presumably because the first .* is
greedy. I tried adding an ? but that doesn't work either. How do I do
this ?

You might be confused at the results because they contain the table HTML.
But you were right first time.

OK thanks. I did get it to work with preg_match
I think I was somehow abusing preg_match_all-