Counting HTML Tags: how? -new at REGex.

[physaux]

Hey guys, i read http://weblogtoolscollection.com/regex/regex.php, about an hour ago, so i am really new to regex. My question is, if i had a string, and i wanted to count how many times "<b>" appears, which function would i call for this? I know how to create the "patterns" and such, just not which function to use.

 

ex: preg_something?

 

 

Any pointers greatly appreciated!!

[cags]

Personally, if the thing you wish to count is as simple as that and doesn't require a complex pattern match, I'd use substr_count.

 

But to count instances of a complex pattern I'd probably use the function preg_match_all.

[JAY6390]

I'd go along with what cags has said. If you want to match using the preg_match_all I'd use '%<b(\b[^>]*)?>%i' as your regex

[thebadbad]

I'd go along with what cags has said. If you want to match using the preg_match_all I'd use '%<b(\b[^>]*)?>%i' as your regex

 

Just a small note; you can remove the optional capture since the word boundary will match even if the following character class (quantized with the asterisk) matches zero times.

 

'~<b\b[^>]*>~i'