Search code examples
phpregexmatchcurly-brackets

Regex matching between curly brackets yields too many results

I have a bunch of text, for example:

foofoofooabcdefhjkldh389dn{pdf}images/1.pdf,100%,500{/pdf}hfnkjt8499duidjglkj

I'd like to extract the following:

{pdf}images/1.pdf,100%,500{/pdf}

So here's a regex I made:

#{pdf}(.*?){/pdf}#

When checking the results I get back:

Array
(
[0] => {pdf}images/1.pdf,100%,500{/pdf}
[1] => images/1.pdf,100%,500
)

I expected to only get the first item in the array, but instead there's two items. I'm using PHP and for testing I use the following website: PHP Regex Tester

How can I only obtain the {pdf}...{/pdf} text?

Solution

  • your using a group in your regex. in your case the group is 

    (.*?)

    This causes PHP to give you the full result {PDF}sometext{/PDF} and the sometext as found in the first group.

    just try the following to get rid of the group:

    #{pdf}.*?{/pdf}#