PHP Regex : Replace substring between two special character

Question

Updating the Question:

$li_text = $li->plaintext;
echo '<br>'.$li_text;
echo '<br>'.$li_text = preg_replace('/\:(.*?)\>/',':', $li_text);

$li getting the Value "Qualification : School & Graduation > BE / B.Tech ( Engineering ) " //by using simple html DOM parsing from other websites

The output i am getting is

Qualification : School & Graduation > BE / B.Tech ( Engineering )
Qualification : School & Graduation > BE / B.Tech ( Engineering ) 

If i assign $li_text = "Qualification : School & Graduation > BE / B.Tech ( Engineering )" then the REGEX is working fine.

Answer 1

Your code is working fine. Please notice that preg_replace doesn't change the subject (i.e. $str) but returns a result.

preg_replace() returns an array if the subject parameter is an array, or a string otherwise.

If matches are found, the new subject will be returned, otherwise subject will be returned unchanged or NULL if an error occurred.

So:

preg_replace('/:(.*?)\>/',':', $str);

echo $str;

is wrong. But:

$str = preg_replace('/:(.*?)\>/',':', $str);

echo $str;

is working.

Answer 2

Try this one :

preg_replace('/(?<=:)(.*?)>/', '', $str);