PHP Knowledge Base

Regular Expressions

Greedy versus Lazy Quantifiers

'Greedy' Quanitifer Example

Code

<?php
$regexp = '/<.*>/';
$str = '<p>This is a paragraph with a <a href="https://example.com">link</a>.</p>';

preg_match_all($regexp, $str, $matches);

$total_matches = count($matches[0]);
echo "Total matches = $total_matches";
?>

Output


Total matches = 1

'Lazy' Quanitifer Example

Code

<?php
$regexp = '/<.*?>/';
$str = '<p>This is a paragraph with a <a href="https://example.com">link</a>.</p>';

preg_match_all($regexp, $str, $matches);

$total_matches = count($matches[0]);
echo "Total matches = $total_matches";
?>

Output


Total matches = 4