What mean [^>] in regex preg php?

Question

Example code:

<?php
$html = <<< html
<p><a href="http://www.google.com" title="10">google.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.cade.com" title="11">cade.com</a></p>
html;

echo preg_replace('#<p><a href\="([^>]+)" title="([^>]+)">([^>]+)</a></p>#','<p>$1 - $2</p>',$html);
?>

It works fine but i would like to know what [^>] means. I know that

+ = 1 or more;
() = subpatterns;

But I don't know about ^>

Please mark an answer that has helped you as accepted, you have not done this for any of your questions. — JohnD, Sep 18 '11 at 19:40

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

3

It means any character other than >

answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

JohnD

3,884
1
28
40

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

2

^, when placed at the start of a character class ([) means any character EXCEPT what's in the class.

In your code, that would mean it would match any character except >.

answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

it will match all characters (.+) isn't? – cssnb2329 Sep 17 '11 at 21:42
No, . matches any character. [^] matches any character but the characters following the ^ before the ]. [^aiu] would match any character except a or i or u [^a-f] would match any character except a, b, c, d, e, f [^.] would match any character except . – itorres Sep 17 '11 at 21:51

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

1

It means that it should match any other character than >. It also means that the person that wrote this code and tried to parse HTML with regex didn't read the Bible and will very soon regret it.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Community

1
1

answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

Darin Dimitrov

1,023,142
271
3,287
2,928

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

1

It means any character apart from >.

(Side note: it is not usually a good idea to use regex to parse HTML.)

answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

Mark Byers

811,555
193
1,581
1,452

Agreed: This is because HTML is not a regular language ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/590747/using-regular-expressions-to-parse-html-why-not ). For small limited input it can be OK but for large complex non-standard data it will break and leave you crying. +1 – Gunnar Hoffman Sep 17 '11 at 21:43

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

1

[^>] means a set of characters including all characters but >.

answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:37

K-ballo

80,396
20
159
169

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 17 '11 at 21:46

You have it in the PHP documentation for PCRE regex syntax

First, you have a list of meta-characters. You can check there to find the meaning of characters in regexes.

Concerning your question we find that:

The [ sign starts a character class definition, finished by ].
The use of ^ as the first character of a character class negates the character class.
> isn't a meta-character.

So, [^>] is any character that isn't >

What mean [^>] in regex preg php?

6 Answers6