From: petermichaux@...
Date: 2006-04-02T00:58:44+09:00
Subject: Regular Expression matching biggest possible

Hi,

I would like to remove comments from a JavaScript file with a Ruby
script. I discovered that my regular expression matching seems to match
the biggest possible substring.

def show_regexp(a,re)
  if a =~ re
    "#{$`}<<#{$&}>>#{$'}"
  else
    "no match"
  end
end
puts show_regexp("/* some comment */ some code /* some other comment
*/", /\/\*[\w\W]*\*\//)

This outputs

<</* some comment */ some code /* some other comment */>>

and I was hoping for it to find the individual comments.

<</* some comment */>> some code <</* some other comment */>>

What should my regular expression be?

Thanks,
Peter