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preg_match_all

(PHP 3>= 3.0.9, PHP 4 )

preg_match_all -- Perform a global regular expression match

Description

int preg_match_all (string pattern, string subject, array matches [, int order])

Searches subject for all matches to the regular expression given in pattern and puts them in matches in the order specified by order.

After the first match is found, the subsequent searches are continued on from end of the last match.

order can be one of two things:

PREG_PATTERN_ORDER

Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of full pattern matches, $matches[1] is an array of strings matched by the first parenthesized subpattern, and so on. 

preg_match_all ("|<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>|U", 
    "<b>example: </b><div align=left>this is a test</div>", 
    $out, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
print $out[0][0].", ".$out[0][1]."\n";
print $out[1][0].", ".$out[1][1]."\n"

This example will produce: 

<b>example: </b>, <div align=left>this is a test</div>
example: , this is a test

So, $out[0] contains array of strings that matched full pattern, and $out[1] contains array of strings enclosed by tags.

PREG_SET_ORDER

Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of first set of matches, $matches[1] is an array of second set of matches, and so on. 

preg_match_all ("|<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>|U", 
    "<b>example: </b><div align=left>this is a test</div>", 
    $out, PREG_SET_ORDER);
print $out[0][0].", ".$out[0][1]."\n";
print $out[1][0].", ".$out[1][1]."\n"

This example will produce: