And testing with random whitespace;

$text = ' style=" font-style : italic ; font-weight : bold ; " ';
$regex = "\s*([a-z][a-z0-9\-]*)\s*:\s*([a-z][a-z0-9\-]*)\s*;";
if (preg_match_all('/'. $regex .'/i', $text, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
print_r($matches);
}
$style = array();
foreach ($matches as $match) {
$style[$match[1]] = $match[2];
}
print_r($style);

works

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] =>   font-style : italic ;
            [1] => font-style
            [2] => italic
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => font-weight : bold ;
            [1] => font-weight
            [2] => bold
        )

)
Array
(
    [font-style] => italic
    [font-weight] => bold
)

Testing with commonly practiced and supported syntactical errors and irregularities;

$text = 'style=font-style:italic;font-weight:bold';

doesn't all work

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => font-style:italic;
            [1] => font-style
            [2] => italic
        )
)
Array
(
    [font-style] => italic
)

It also doesn't work for non-textual properties, and property names starting with '-' exclude the '-';

$text = 'style=border-width: 0 2em 10px 0; border-left: 1px solid #000; -moz-border-radius: foo;';

outputs

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => moz-border-radius: foo;
            [1] => moz-border-radius
            [2] => foo
        )

)
Array
(
    [moz-border-radius] => foo
)

This regex deals with those issues (but not the missing trailing semicolon ';' $regex = "\s*([a-z\-][a-z0-9\-]*)\s*:\s*([^;]*)\s*;";

I'm not sure what the best way to deal with that is given the context. Perhaps something like

$text = 'font-style:italic;font-weight:bold';
$regex = "\s*([a-z\-][a-z0-9\-]*)\s*:\s*([^;]*)\s*";
$styles = explode(';', $text);
$all_matches = array();
foreach($styles as $style) {
if (preg_match('/'. $regex .'/i', $style, $matches)) {
print_r($matches);
$all_matches[] = $matches;
}
}
$style = array();
foreach ($all_matches as $match) {
$style[$match[1]] = $match[2];
}
print_r($style);

Bevan/