PHP preg函数不解析html注释

Question

I have a problem that only occurs on 1 specific linux server. Its a CentOS 5.7 Apache 2.2 PHP 5.33 server in the back just for the record.

I have a PHP template class that parses out loops out of HTML comments in the template files with the preg_ functions. Example file:

    <!--if place-->
        {place}
    <!--else place-->
        Nothing
    <!--endif place-->

This is the command i use:

$found = preg_match("/(?i)<!--(if|begin) ([a-zA-Z0-9_.\->!%<>= ]+)-->/u", $template, $aTag, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, $position);

This should give me a branch with name "place".

On my local and all other enviroments it parses the if branch correctly, only on this sever it does not parse them and just lets them in the code which means that in my case it shows both the var {place} and the string Nothing.

Like i said, it works on local Windows -> WampServer machine. It works on other Linux machines, also CENTOS ones.

It seems like this machine is not recognizing the HTML comment tags as parsable for the php script. Is that possible?

Thanks in advance. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to add "s" modifier to your expression to force multiline matching mode:

"/(?i)<!--(if|begin) ([a-zA-Z0-9_.\->!%<>= ]+)-->/s"

and I'm 100% sure you do not need to use "u" at all.

Answer 2

For anybody that might come accross this also.

It was a plesk compiled PHP version (5.3.3) that had a PCRE library from 2006!! compiled into it, that basically ignored all HTML tags in parsing!

So when you have this problem, that some stuff gets parsed and some stuff not, check your phpinfo for PCRE extension date.