php regex [b] to

Answer 1

Try ~ as a delimiter instead

preg_match("~<b>(.*?)</b>~is", $text, $b);

Answer 2

There are various BBCode parsers available for PHP, for instance

• http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.bbcode.php

which allows you to simply define your replacement rules by hand:

echo bbcode_parse(
    bbcode_create(
        array(
            'b' => array(
                'type'      => BBCODE_TYPE_NOARG,
                'open_tag'  => '<b>',
                'close_tag' => '</b>'
            )
        )
    ),
    '[b]Bold Text[/b]'
);
// prints <b>Bold Text</b>

Also check the various similar questions about BBCode Parsers:

• https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=bbcode+php