preg_match(); - Unknown modifier '+' [duplicate]

Question

Alright, so I'm currently working on parsing an RSS feed. I've gotten the data I need no problem, and all I have left is parsing the game title.

Here is the code I currently have (ignore the sloppiness, it is just a proof of concept):

<?php $url = 'http://raptr.com/conexion/rss';  $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);  $result = curl_exec($ch);  curl_close($ch);  $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($result);  $lastgame = $xml->channel->item[0]->description; preg_match('[a-zA-Z]+</a>.$', $lastgame, $match);  echo $match; ?> 

Everything was working great, but then I started getting this error:

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]:  Unknown modifier '+' in raptr.php on line 14 

The only thing I have left is to strip out the closing anchor tag and the period, but I can't seem to figure out why it isn't liking the '+'. Any ideas?

Edit: This should not be marked as a duplicate as it was asked two years before the other question.

Answer 1

You need to use delimiters with regexes in PHP. You can use the often used /, but PHP lets you use any matching characters, so @ and # are popular.

Further Reading.

If you are interpolating variables inside your regex, be sure to pass the delimiter you chose as the second argument to preg_quote().

Answer 2

Try this code:

preg_match('/[a-zA-Z]+<\/a>.$/', $lastgame, $match); print_r($match); 

Using / as a delimiter means you also need to escape it here, like so: <\/a>.

UPDATE

preg_match('/<a.*<a.*>(.*)</', $lastgame, $match); echo'['.$match[1].']'; 

Might not be the best way...