i'm regex challenged: how to get a url out of a string?

need some help here:

i have a string with some html tags inside, like:

visit this <b>GREAT</b> site at 
<a href="http://www.greatsite.com/greatstuff/somepage.php">
http://www.greatsite.com/greatstuff/somepage.php</a>!!!

Code (markup):

now i need the full url out of this string, in this case

http://www.greatsite.com/greatstuff/somepage.php

Code (markup):

anyone good in regex? spent the last 2 hours looking for somthing like this, but couldnt find anything that works. this is what i have so far, "Regex Coach" says its correct, but i get a "Unknown modifier '/'" error:

function geturl($string) {
	preg_match("/https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?/",$string, $matches);
	return $matches[0];
}

Code (markup):

 

Those first two forward-slashes in your regex need to be escaped, the regex interpreter thinks that the pattern ends after the first one. changing it to :\/\/ should help things.

 

Try:

preg_match_all("/<a[^>]*href=(\'|\")([^\'\"]*)[^>]*>/i", $file_contents, $link_array, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

Code (markup):

 

It's even simpler if all your links have the structure you presented:

$pattern='%<a\s*href="([^"]*)%';

$yourString = 'visit this <b>GREAT</b> site at 
<a href="http://www.greatsite.com/greatstuff/somepage.php">
http://www.greatsite.com/greatstuff/somepage.php</a>!!!';

preg_match_all($pattern,$yourString,$matches,PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);

print_r($matches[1]);

PHP:

Regards,

Adrian