$re = '/(?<=<div|<a)( *id="[^"]+")/';
$str = '<p id="keepthis"> text</p><div id="foo">text</div><div id="bar">more text</div><a id="red"href="page6.php">Page 6</a><a id="green"href="page7.php">Page 7</a>';
$subst = " ";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php