From: Aidan <ahumphreys@...>
Date: 2002-05-18T00:45:00+09:00
Subject: Greedy Regexp

Are Ruby regular expressions, especially those built using the 
Regexp::MULTILINE option, greedy by default? 

Is there anyway to make them non greedy?

I need to scan over a large HTML table which consists of a large number of 
table row units:

<TR>
  <TD>stuff</TD>
  <TD>other stuff</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
  <TD>stuff</TD>
  <TD>other stuff</TD>
</TR>

and so on ... The program needs to extract each <TR></TR> unit and process 
it individually. Will a RE like

<TR>.*</TR> 

need to recoded with some guards against greedyness?

A.