PHP regex get only first value in between two strings

Question

I have a string that looks like this

aa bcdef123efg hh aa lklmasd456 hh (whitespace and bolding is used for illustration)

If I have 456, I want to find where 456 is and grab everything in between aa and hh.

This is the regex that I was able to come up with so far (?=aa)(.*)456(.*)(?=hh)

However, that doesn't stop at the first occurance of aa it encounters (backwards from the 456 match)

What would be the proper syntax for what I'm trying to achieve.

Are you just trying to extract the string between aa and hh? Is it always hhaa or are there characters between them? If not, what about exploding them into an array and using inarray() to find strings with '456'? — nwolybug
– nwolybug, Commented Aug 26, 2014 at 18:20

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-26 18:19:50Z

1

You can use this lookaround based regex:

aa((?:(?!hh).)*?456(?:(?!hh).)*?)hh

answered Aug 26, 2014 at 18:19

anubhava

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