Regular Expression: What is the wrong with this code ?

[abdoelmasry]

What is the wrong with this code ?

it always returns zero matches.

I think it should return two matches,

I need to read how may tags like this pattern

<!== any thing ==!>

$string = "<!==Abdo==!><!==Ahmed==!>";
print_r(preg_match_all("/<\!==*==\!>/", $string));

if anybody can help.

Thank you

[Rabbit]

The asterisk (*) character tells it to take the preceding character/group and look for 0 to infinite matches. So in this case, you are saying you want 0 to infinite equal sign symbols (=). Asterisk does not mean any number of character.

The expression you want is <!==[^<]*==!>. What you want is for it to match any number of characters that is not a less than symbol (<). Therefore, [^<] matches a character that is not a less than symbol. And the asterisk after it tells it to match any number of characters that is not a less than symbol.

[abdoelmasry]

Thank you Pro Very good (y)