Question

    <?php
        $target="This is a test | dont present me!";
        $pattern="/\| (.*?)/";
       $target=  preg_replace($pattern, '', $target);
        echo $target;
    ?>

I am trying to get rid of everything that is from the pipe line towards the right.. but the regular expression doest work. what am I missing?

Answer 1

Try the following:

$pattern="/\| .*/";

You simply don’t need the parentheses, since you don’t repeat it and don’t reuse in the replacement. And the question mark is superfluous after the *, both are quantifiers. (And @wrikken’s comment is right, *? is the lazy version of *.)