http://wiki.andreas-duffner.de/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Regex Regex - Revision history 2026-04-07T20:17:58Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.39.17 http://wiki.andreas-duffner.de/index.php?title=Regex&diff=714&oldid=prev Andreas: Created page with "=== non greedy === Imagine you have the following text: <nowiki><br />'Stupid ad'<br /><br />Real content<br /></nowiki> If you use the regular expression <nowiki><br />'St..." 2023-02-24T20:18:27Z <p>Created page with &quot;=== non greedy === Imagine you have the following text: &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#039;Stupid ad&#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Real content&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt; If you use the regular expression &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#039;St...&quot;</p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>=== non greedy ===<br /> Imagine you have the following text:<br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#039;Stupid ad&#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Real content&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> If you use the regular expression<br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#039;Stupid.*&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> then you will match the complete text, not just the &#039;Stupid ad&#039;. That is because &#039;.&#039; is greedy. <br /> If you want it to not be greedy, try:<br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#039;Stupid.*?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> Now you should only match <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#039;Stupid ad&#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> because you are using a non greedy search.</div> Andreas