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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-29T06:28:19+00:00

I would like to delete all comments with their contents with preg_replace(). Example: $mDom

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I would like to delete all comments with their contents with preg_replace().

Example:

$mDom =  
<<<HTML
<html>
word1 <!-- word2 --> word3 <!-- word4 --> word5
</html>
HTML;

$mDom = preg_replace('/<!--.*-->/ius', '', $mDom);

var_dump( $mDom );

The example above will print: “word1 word5”
I want: “word1 word3 word5”

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You need to use lazy (non-greedy) quantification:

    /<!--.*?-->/ius

    Note the ? behind *. It causes the regex engine to stop as soon as a match is found, not trying to make the match as long as possible.

    Read more about it.

    EDIT : You can also use a special modifier U:

    U (PCRE_UNGREEDY)
    This modifier inverts the “greediness” of the quantifiers so that they are not greedy by default, but become greedy if followed by ?.

    (PHP Manual: Possible modifiers in regex patterns)

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