capturing a div that doesn't contain any divs

[BloodyMind]

Here is my the expression I'm trying which is logical, but it fails #<div[^>]*>(?!(<div))</div>#

any help will be really appreciated

[BloodyMind]

using PCRE since POSIX are deprecated

[.josh]

So you have a negative lookahead looking for the absence of <div you aren't actually consuming any characters, matching anything in-between your main opening div and closing div. 

[shehabic]

So you have a negative lookahead looking for the absence of <div you aren't actually consuming any characters, matching anything in-between your main opening div and closing div.

 

So what would the correct regex be for such a case , I have a very simillar case . . .

[sasa]

try

<?php
function my_find($data, $start_tag, $end_tag){
    $end = strpos($data, $end_tag);
    if ($end){
        if (($start = strpos($data, $start_tag)) !== false){
            while ((($tmp = strpos($data, $start_tag, $start+1 )) !== false) and $tmp < $end)
                    $start = $tmp;
        } else echo 'no open tag';
        return substr($data, $start, $end - $start + strlen($end_tag));
    }
}

$test = '<div>1 <div>2 <div>3<div>4</div></div></div></div>';
echo my_find($test, '<div', '</div>');
?>