how can i collect all the data between this 2 strings and put them in an array ?

how can i collect all the data between each <a> and </b> and put them in an array ?

<a>1234</b>
<a>5678</b>
<a>abcd</b>
<a>efgh</b>
<a>ijkl</b>
<a>mnop</b>

 

if you have the list in a file,

 

<?php
    $data = '<a>1234</b>
             <a>5678</b>
             <a>abcd</b>
             <a>efgh</b>
             <a>ijkl</b>
             <a>mnop</b>';

    preg_match_all("|<[ba]>(.*)</[ba]>|Ui", $data, $matches);
    $array = $matches[0];
    
    // $array now contains all the elements content
?>

PHP:

 

^^ I wrote a huge function to do this that used complex math to calculate string lenghts , extracted the start and end positions of the string and returned a array. Sometimes I make things harder for myself it seems although it was handy for learning string manipulation , great bit of code .

 

lol, I know what you mean! I've over engineered things time and time again