Note that such isn't really the problem. Putting nearly anything after or before the .*? in a regex can cause you problems. Even just 

    /<a href="(.*?)">/i

[download]
will match way too much by matching way too early against 
    '<a href="oops" lots of stuff <a href="ok">'
    '<a href="oops" > d'oh! whitespace! <a href="ok">'
    '<a href="oops, break a browser? <a href="ok">'

[download]
(:

                - tye

In reply to Re^5: Parsing out URLs with regex (diedotstar) by tye
in thread Parsing out URLs with regex by xtomservox

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