regex repeated asterisk pattern matching

Question

If I do the regex matching

preg_match('/^[*]{2}((?:[^*]|[*][^*]*[*])+?)[*]{2}(?![*]{2})/s', "**A** **B**", $matches);

I get the result for $matches I want of

Array ( [0] => **A** [1] => A )

but I am not sure how to modify the regex to yield the same result in $matches from the input text without the space in the middle, that is, "**A****B**" .

Answer 1

It looks like the regex matching

preg_match('/^[*]{2}((?:[^*]|[*][^*]*[*])+?)[*]{2}/s', "**A****B**", $matches);

yields the result for $matches I want of

Array ( [0] => **A** [1] => A )