Reg Expression is Greedy

[heath]

How can I keep ereg_replace or preg_replace from being greedy?

Want the match to return first occurance of the regex, not the last.

In other words:

$str = "AA TAKE ME AWAY PPP AA XYZ PPP AA XYZ PPP jfkldjflkdjfsa PPP";

$str = ereg_replace ("AA.*PPP", "", $str);


I want to whack out "AA TAKE ME AWAY PPP" - not the whole string.  The only alternative I've been able to find is using {min,max} but this is imprecise because I never know how many characters are going to be in the other, unwanted matches.

Basically, I just want the first occurance found, not the greedy, biggest one that regex otherwise mandates.

Also - the above places a blank space in the string - how do I insert NOTHINGNESS?

Thanks in Advance

[Justin]

$str = ereg_replace ("AA.*?PPP", "", $str);

That should do it, although it will replace all occurrances of AA...PPP in the string.

HTH

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support