Preg match but stop with multiple characters

[wesg]

I'm doing some preg programming, but I need to capture text that doesn't include the </a> anchor tag. I know about the ([^/]+) wildcard, but how I can use this with multiple characters? I want to have a match that starts with my string, but stops at the first </a> tag it encounters.

Any suggestions?

[idfer]

You want to use the quantifier minimizer, question mark:

if a quantifier is followed by a question mark, then it ceases to be greedy, and instead matches the minimum number of times possible

So try: (.*?)</a>

[wesg]

Thanks, that seems to work, but I still can't get it working exactly right. Something like ([^(</a>)]+) would work better, but the ^ character doesn't seem to work with a group.

Suggestions?

[edited by: eelixduppy at 10:17 pm (utc) on June 8, 2009]
[edit reason] disabled smileys [/edit]