<?php
$imageTag = '<img src = http://nycxplorer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bagel1-1.jpg >';
//grab the src portion of the image tag
$srcPattern = "/src.*?=.*?(\s|>)/s";
preg_match($srcPattern, $imageTag, $srcParts);
$srcPart = $srcParts[0];
//remove all whitespace from within and around the src portion
$srcPart = trim(preg_replace('/[\s]+/','', $srcPart));
//grab the src URL
$oldUrl = substr($srcPart, 4);
//if there are quotes at the beginning of the url, cut them off
if(strpos($oldUrl, '"') == 0 || strpos($oldUrl, "'") == 0) {
$oldUrl = substr($oldUrl, 1, strlen($oldUrl)-2);
}
print_r($oldUrl);
?>