I'm working on HTML (I can't control it so can't parse it as XML as it wont always be valid) .

I want to match (for example) any div that does not have another div inside it:

(the bold parts here)

<div>
<div>
<div>Foo</div>
</div>
</div>

<div />




<div>
<span>Bar</span>
</div>



This works:


/<(div)([^>]*)(\/>|>((?!<[\/]*\1>).?)*?)<\/\1>/s


on strings up to around 5000 chars, then appears to cause php to crash. It also seems overy complicated for what i'm trying to do.

Is there another easier way?

Thanks :)