Regex Problem[Resolved by pax]

[Lunatic3]

It seems that I am missiing something very basic (am I?) . All I want to do is matching any sequence of characters upto a speical sequence for example XYZ, then continue. I used this pattern:"(?<found>.*)XYZ" . Now if the string is "blah blah XYZ mendhak :P XYZ" I want the group 'found' to have two values, but this pattern ignores the first XYZ and just matches the second. I tried lookahead and behind assertions with no luck. It should be very simple, but I cant do it . Please help.

[pax]

Hi Lunatic.

I think it's because the * is "greedy" it will continue to the last occurence. if you use *? instead it should halt at the first occurence.

I'm not to experienced with RegEx but I have seen this explained somewhere at http://www.regular-expressions.info/charclass.html


Hope it helps.

[Lunatic3]

Hi pax

Thank you very much. I think I tried those 'lazy' quantifiers with no luck. Maybe I have not used them in a correct syntax because the original pattern was not simple as one I mentioned here.

And that tutorial about Regular Expressions is very good. Thanks again.