From: 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...>
Date: 2011-03-25T09:31:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Regexp, matching only the content within parentheses

Regexes are "greedy" by default.  Don't look for [^)] characters, 
instead look for a closing parentheses:

str = "aaa( abc(def)ghi (jkl)(mno) )"

if (str =~ /[(] .* [)]/xms )
  puts Regexp.last_match[0]
end

--output:--
( abc(def)ghi (jkl)(mno) )

How you will know when to use non-greedy patterns, like [^)] or .*?, 
versus the natural greediness of a regex is not clear to me.

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