I have a string like this
<div><span style="">toto</span> some character <span>toto2</span></div>
My regex:
/(<span .*>)(.*)(<\/span>)/
I used preg_match and it returns the entire string
<span style="">toto</span> some character <span>toto2</span>
I want it returns:
<span style="">toto</span>
and
<span>toto2</span>
What do I need to do to achieve this? Thanks.
How about this:
/(<span[^>]*>)(.*?)(<\/span>)/
Check the docs here at PHP preg_match Repetition:
By default, the quantifiers are "greedy", that is, they match as much as possible
and
However, if a quantifier is followed by a question mark, then it becomes lazy, and instead matches the minimum number of times possible
Even though I guess all previous answers are correct, I just want to add that as you only want to capture the whole expressions (i.e. from to ) you don't have to capture eveything inside the regexp with () The following does what you expect without capturing additional expressions
/(<span\w*[^>]*>[^<]*<\/span>)/
(tested on http://rubular.com/)
EDIT : of course there might be some differences between PHP and ruby regexp implementations, but the idea is the same :)