From: Nobuyoshi Nakada <nobu@...>
Date: 2008-04-07T10:05:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Regex and non-greedy matching?

Hi,

At Mon, 7 Apr 2008 08:25:28 +0900,
Marc Heiler wrote in [ruby-talk:297262]:
> I have a slight problem. I have strings with some tags such as
> 
> '<b><lightblue>name:</></b>'
> 
> I need to match "name:" and "lightblue"
> In other words:
>   - What is between <> </>
> and
>   - What is inside the first <> right next to "name:"
> 
> The following regex does not work:
> 
> '<b><lightblue>name:</></b>' =~ /<([a-zA-Z]+)>(.+?)<\/>/

/<([a-zA-Z]+)>.*?([^<>]+)<\/>/ =~ "<b><lightblue>name:</></b>"

> $2 should only be name:
> and $1 should only be lightblue

Non-greedy matching doesn't mean the shortest result matching.
It matches at the leftmost position.

-- 
Nobu Nakada