preg_replace() ?

[pastet89]

Hello all! I need some help:

I have this string:

 $string = "a.whatever.could.stay.here.b";

I need by having just "a" and "b" to delete all the string and to have finally:

$final_string = "";

 

On the place of ".whatever.could.stay.here." there could stay really everithing - " ", ",", "." "?", "'", "[", "/", every letter, every number - EVERYTHING. Just the beginning "a" and the end "b" are defined and known. I know that here I can use something like

 

preg_replace  ( mixed $pattern  , mixed $replacement  , mixed $subject)

 

but I don't know how to define the $pattern part of the function and I am not absolutely sure that this function will do something here... Can you help me?  ???

 

[nrg_alpha]

EDIT.. oops..nevermind, I missread that first part.. you want to wipe out all strings that start with a and end with b?

 

$string = "a.whatever.could.stay.here.b";
$finalString = preg_replace('#^a.*?b$#', '', $string);

[nrg_alpha]

Come to think of it, I suppose even quicker would be: #a.*b# (one of the rarer cases where .* is acceptable, as opposed to making it a lazy quantifyer [also negates the need for ^ or $..don't know what I was thinking there...])