Language/Platform: VB.NET 2008
Project: I am creating a program to search HTML source code for a very specific URL string.
Issue: I am not good with these regular expressions at all and am having trouble getting what I need.

Here is what I have so far in VB.NET:

        Dim testNum As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(TextBox1.Text, "<a href='series.php\?ID=[0-9]'>[^</a>]</a>")

        If testNum.Count = 0 Then
            End
        Else
            MessageBox.Show(testNum.Count)
        End If

Expression: <a href='series.php\?ID=[0-9]'>[^</a>]</a>

Sample Text:

<a href='series.php?ID=23'>Aishiteru ze Baby ( Love You Baby )</a>
<a href='series.php?ID=230'>Akage no Anne ( Anne of Green Gables )</a>

There is an ID number that is variable in Integer value and length directly after ID=.

Between the HTML anchor tags, there is variable text that can have any length and any characters.

I run my code and no values are being returned (The count of the Match collection is 0).

I know my code is correct because if I just do a search for a single character, I get results. ("a" = 14 matches)

So, I'm totally lost and have no idea what is wrong with my code as, for some reason, I am totally not grasping this RegEx thing entirely and what constitutes an illegal expression.

Thanks for any help provided.

 try

<a href='series.php\?ID=\d+'>[^<]+</a>

u sh get 2 matches:

<a href='series.php?ID=23'>Aishiteru ze Baby ( Love You Baby )</a>
<a href='series.php?ID=230'>Akage no Anne ( Anne of Green Gables )</a>

u need to read on using the character class [...]

and quantifiers like  \d+ when u are trying to match on "230"

[0-9]    will fail to match on '230"

Thank you.  Took me a minute to understand why that worked but I get it.  Thanks so much.

I've already learned alot more with this one issue than I have in a while.

I've tried reading regular-expressions.info but was having trouble understanding it.

Looking at what you did and then looking up the explanations what the parts were doing makes much more sense.

Thanks :)