matching a paragraph tag with attributes

[tryingtolearn]

I have to extract info from two different type of paragraph tags on a page

 

The first is

<p><a href="link.html">text</a></p>

The second is

<p class="row">
<span class="hh" id="rag"> </span>
<a href="link.html">text -</a></p>

 

using

<[p^>]+>

gets the first kind but Im having problems matching the tag with an attribute

I need to get everything inbetween the paragraph tags from both styles.

any help would be appreciated

[Garethp]

'~<p[^>]>(.+)</p>~'

[tryingtolearn]

Thanks, still doesnt seem to match it though.

Ill keep looking.

[Garethp]

'~<p[^>]+>(.+)</p>s~'

 

Sorry, I forgot to add the plus

[thebadbad]

Garethp, <p[^>]+> will not match <p>, you would have to use an asterisk instead of the plus. And you have to make your second quantifier lazy, else it'll match to the last closing tag in the source. Lastly, you misplaced the pattern modifier This'll do:

 

~<p\b[^>]*>(.*?)</p>~is

 

I added the word boundary \b so that it doesn't wrongfully match tags like pre and param. Important in case those tags appear in the source.

[Garethp]

Hahah, thanks. How can I make patterns lazy and greedy? I'm not entirely sure how to do that.

[thebadbad]

A question mark following a quantifier makes it lazy, meaning that it will match as little as possible. There's a longer explanation and some examples in this thread: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,236933.msg1104789.html#msg1104789