ansaurus

Question

Answer 1

+1 A:

You cannot reliably parse HTML with regular expressions. Use an HTML parser instead.

Andy Lester 2010-10-15 03:46:57

Answer 2

+2 A:

Although I would normally agree with Andy, you should be able to parse this portion of an HTML string out given the specific beginning and end.

The . (dot) will not match newline characters without the m modifier. Throw that at the end of your regex pattern and give it a shot.

Jason McCreary 2010-10-15 03:50:17

Answer 3

+1 A:

First, there are certain characters in your regex need to be escaped, e.g. the dots.

Second, even if your current regex works, it won't match many HTML documents because your requirements are too specific.

In my opninion, you should use this regex instead:

  /<!doctype\s*html\b[^><]+>(.*?)<!--\s*end\s+menu\s*-->/ism

Vantomex 2010-10-15 06:40:43

+1 for noting the exactness of the OP's regex. I still think even yours will need the `m` modifier.

Jason McCreary 2010-10-15 12:44:56

Oops, thanks @Jason for catching that. :-)

Vantomex 2010-10-15 13:24:28

Answer 4

A:

Ms2ger 2010-10-16 17:33:56

How can I parse this HTML with a regular expression in PHP?