Question

I can’t figure out why this is not stopping where I thought it should.

Here is the example string.

<div class="blah"><a href="www.foo.bar">foo bar</a></div>
<div class="blah2"><span><a href="www.bar.foo">bar foo</a></span></div>

This grouping repeats itself over and over so I’m using the following.

preg_match('@<div class="blah">.*</span></div>@', $page, $matches);

It works but gets every single grouping at once instead of one at a time. Am I missing something simple here?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Try:

<div class="blah">.*?</span></div>

.* matches greedily, so it will encapsulate as much as it can within that .* before matching the rest of the regex. .*? matches reluctantly, so it matches as little as possible before continuing to the rest of the regex.