Get everything between this:

[iHack]

I need to get everything between <textarea name="textarea" rows="5"> and </textarea> I also need the regex for between two <br> 's

 

 

Thanks,

iHack

[roopurt18]

Regexps are best used when you're matching a specific pattern, which means you don't know the characters in advance.  In this case, you know the exact starting and ending points of the string, so I'd recommend a combination of strpos and substr to accomplish what you need.

 

<?php
  $srch1 = '<textarea name="textarea" rows="5">';
  $srch2 = '</textarea>';
  $pos1 = strpos($the_string, $srch1);
  if($pos1 !== FALSE){
    $pos1 += strlen($srch1);
    $pos2 = strpos($the_string, $srch2, $pos1);
    if($pos2 !== FALSE){
      $substr = substr($the_string, $pos1, $pos2 - $pos1);
      echo $substr;
    }
  }
?>

That may be slightly faster than invoking the regexp engine.  Also, I've had trouble in the past using regexps on very large strings so for things that could be potentially large I try to avoid them.

 

I didn't test that code, some of the offsets may be off by 1 so add '+ 1' as necessary.

[iHack]

Thanks and $the_string is the string that I want to search, correct?

[roopurt18]

Yes.