Match everything inbetween two tags with Regular Expressions?

Question

How can I match (PCRE) everything inbetween two tags?

I tried something like this:

<!--\s*LoginStart\s*-->(.*)<!--\s*LoginEnd\s*-->

But it didn't work out too well for me..

I'm kind of new to regular expressions, so I was hoping if someone would be kind enough to explain to me how I would accomplish this, if its even possible with regular expressions.

Thanks

Answer 1

$string = '<!-- LoginStart --><div id="stuff">text</div><!-- LoginEnds -->';
$regex = '#<!--\s*LoginStart\s*-->(.*?)<!--\s*LoginEnds\s*-->#s';

preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);

print_r($matches); // $matches[1] = <div id="stuff">text</div>

explanations:

(.*?) = non greedy match (match the first <!-- LoginEnds --> it finds
    s = modifier in $regex (end of the variable) allows multiline matches
        such as '<!-- LoginStart -->stuff
                 more stuff
                 <!-- LoginEnds -->'

Answer 2

I did not know about non-greedy matching, this will come in handy in the future. Thanks a lot guys.

Answer 3

Yeah, I didn't know about the non-greedy thing either! Is there a site that explains each modifier?