If you just wants filter out information between two parts of a string, i used the following, it works better for me then the sscanf function.
<?php
function scanstr($zoekstr,$part1,$part2) {
$firstpos=strpos ($zoekstr, $part1)+strlen($part1);
$lastpos=strpos ($zoekstr, $part2);
$scanresult=substr ($zoekstr, $firstpos, $lastpos-$firstpos);
return($scanresult);
}
echo scanstr ("var1=hello&var2=test&var3=more","var2=","&var3");
?>