From: Wes Gamble <weyus@...>
Date: 2006-08-04T06:31:08+09:00
Subject: Non-greediness in a regex - need some help verifying syntax

All,

Need some medium - level regex help.

Here's my regex: /~\^LNK:[\t\r\n]+?\^~/m

I'm trying to find all occurrences of strings in my big string that are 
between
~^LNK: and ^~ sequences of characters that have at least one tab, form 
feed, or newline character between those two characters.  I use the 
multiline option so that I can match on the newlines.

What I'm seeing is the string that is consumed by this regex spans many 
many many
~^LNK ^~ pairs so that I am removing a bunch of tabs, newlines, etc. 
that I don't want to.

I understand the concept of greediness in regexes, so I put the ? after 
the [\t\r\n] sequence.

Why is the match spanning so many pairs of the delimiter sequences?  Why 
doesn't regex engine stop attempting to match when it sees that first ^~ 
after the ~^LNK:?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Wes


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