preg_replace all spans and their content with nothing does not work

Question

The preg_replcae in this code is from another answer on this site, and is supposed to replace all spans and their contents with nothing i.e remove all spans and their content. But, why doesn't it work?

$string = <<<STR
<span>Span 1</span>
<div>DIV 1</div><div class="text">DIV 2</div>
<span> Span 2 </span>
<div class="apache">DIV 3</div>
<span>
Span 3
</span>
<span>
    Span 4
        </span>

STR;

$string = preg_replace("/<span[^>]+\>/is","",$string);

echo $string;

The end result I was hoping to get is:

<div>DIV 1</div><div class="text">DIV 2</div>
<div class="apache">DIV 3</div>
// no spans and their content
// everything else remains

The answer that had the regex I've used https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3209132/php-remove-span-tag-from-string — Norman, Jul 15 '18 at 08:22
Read [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1685196) — Michel, Jul 15 '18 at 09:56

Blue · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-15T08:33:08.517

0

[^>]+ matches one or more characters, so <span> wont match. Use * there instead. Then, because you're trying to match everything in between, let's match all the content (.*?), and then the </span> closing tag. /<span[^>]*>.*?<\/span>/is becomes our final regex.

<?php

$string = <<<STR
<span>Span 1</span>
<div>DIV 1</div><div class="text">DIV 2</div>
<span> Span 2 </span>
<div class="apache">DIV 3</div>
<span>
Span 3
</span>
<span>
    Span 4
        </span>

STR;

$string = preg_replace("/<span[^>]*>.*?<\/span>/is","",$string);

echo $string;

You can see the output here: https://3v4l.org/X9C53

edited Jul 15 '18 at 08:33

answered Jul 15 '18 at 08:27

Blue

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Any chance the regex can be done without specifying the second `<\/span>` – Norman Jul 15 '18 at 08:33
You have to match the original span tag, the enclosing text, and the closing span in order to remove that content. If you're looking to do some fancy replacements, I'd look into regex groups and callbacks. – Blue Jul 15 '18 at 08:35
Care to explain the downvote? – Blue Jul 15 '18 at 10:27
I didn't downvote. – Norman Jul 15 '18 at 12:43

preg_replace all spans and their content with nothing does not work

1 Answers1