According to the documentation and my experience, the split()
function returns the an array of strings separated by the
given regexp, _but without the text of the regexp itself_.

However, it seems that if the regexp is found at the
beginning of the string to be separated, it is left in.

This seems similar to bug #9, which was supposedly resolved
in 3.0b4 (by the way, this bug happens in 3.0b4 as well as
3.0RC-3 under Win32).

--- EXAMPLE CODE -------------------------------------------
$remaining_line = array(
   'some text then <A Href="link">and then more text',
   'some more text terminated with <a href="',
   '<a href="another link" followed by text'
);

for ($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) {

   $temp = split('<[[:space:]]*[Aa][[:space:]]*[Hh][Rr][Ee][Ff]'.
                    '[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*"[[:space:]]*',
                 $remaining_line[$i],
                 2);
   echo "($temp[0]) ($temp[1])<BR>\n";

}

--- OUTPUT -------------------------------------------------
(some text then ) (link">and then more text)
(some more text terminated with ) ()
() (a href="another link" followed by text)
------------------------------------------------------------

Note that the "a href=" text is removed from all lines
except the last. Interestingly, the leading "<" is stripped.