Question

Okay I might not be going about this the right way, but here goes..

I have this string that takes a link and extracts the text between the tags…

$string = $item;
$pattern = '/\<a([^>]*)\>([^<]*)\<\/a\>/i';
$replacement = '$2';
$message = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $string);

There are a few items in this string that have ampersands (in the text portion, not the tag portion), however most don’t. I’m trying to figure out a way to either incorporate the ampersand into the current pattern or do another preg_replace on the $message to remove the ampersand after the tags are striped away.

THANKS!

Answer 1

Do you want to remove everything after the ampersand? Then it’s

'/\<a([^>]*)\>([^<&]*)[^<]*\<\/a\>/i';

Otherwise, you’ll need a 2nd operation.

BTW: Your regex will also match other tags starting with <a, such as the <author> or the <audio> tag.