Regex doesn't work with multi line

Question

$regpattern4 = "!<media:description type='plain'> (.*) <\/media:description>!";

I am parsing an XML document. The above Regex works if there are no line breaks in the description, but how do I make it work even if there are line breaks?

Answer 1

Try

 preg_match("/pattern/s", $text)

Answer 2

You need to add the s (DOTALL) modifier:

$regpattern4 = "!(.*)<\/media:description>!s";

Answer 3

Hi,

The manual page "Pattern Modifiers" might interest you, about that, especially the s (PCRE_DOTALL) modifier :

If this modifier is set, a dot metacharacter in the pattern matches all characters, including newlines. Without it, newlines are excluded. This modifier is equivalent to Perl's /s modifier. A negative class such as [^a] always matches a newline character, independent of the setting of this modifier.

Your regex will become something like this :

$regpattern4 = "!<media:description type='plain'> (.*) <\/media:description>!s";

Note I added the 's' modifier after the end delimiter.

Answer 4

Why are you using regex to parse xml? Why not use simplexml_load_string to load the XML document and "walk" through it. It will be less error prone than complex regex statements, unless you are looking to do a simple replace.