I wrote this PHP code to make some substitutions:

function cambio($txt){
    $from=array(
        '/\+\>([^\+\>]+)\<\+/', //finds +>text<+
        '/\%([^\%]+)\%/',   //finds %text%
    );

    $to=array(
        '<span class="P">\1</span>',
        '<span>\1</span>',
    );

    return preg_replace($from,$to,$txt);
}

echo cambio('The fruit I most like is: +> %apple% %banna% %orange% <+.');

Resulting into this:

The fruit I most like is: <span class="P"> <span>apple</span> <span>banna</span> <span>orange</span> </span>.

however I needed to identify the fruit's span tags, like this:

The fruit I most like is: <span class="P"> <span class="a">apple</span> <span class="b">banna</span> <span class="c">coco</span> </span>.

I'd buy a fruit to whom discover a regular expression to accomplish this :-)