This should be fairly simple, but it keeps failing (w/o reporting any errors) so I assume I am missing something from the syntax OR I have configred MAMP wrong.

Basically I am trying to use a back reference within my preg_match. for example, to match tag, any tag, and its contents.


PHP Code:
$a="<em>some text goes here.</em>dshashd xxc dsfa";
$r=preg_match("/<([a-z]+)>[^<]*<\/\1>/", $a, $match); 
echo ($r)? $match[1]: "nope"; 
The first (and only) capturing group gathers the 'tag' and the \1 backreferences the capture pattern. have This works (as far as the simple test of finding a tag) on just about any PURE regexp tester, but on my local installation of MAMP (PHP 5.26) it always returns FALSE. Is there a difference syntax for backreferences in MAMP or did I go astray here in some other fashion?