Regex Non-Greedy (Lazy)
For non greedy match, try this <TD.*?>
non-greedy
RegEx: Smallest possible match or nongreedy match
For a regular expression like .* or .+, append a question mark (.*? or .+?) to match as few characters as possible. To optionally match a section (?:blah)? but without matching unless absolutely necessary, use something like (?:blah){0,1}?. For a repeating match (either using {n,} or {n,m} syntax) append a question mark to try to … Read more
Why does a simple .*? non-greedy regex greedily include additional characters before a match?
I figured out a solution with some help from Regex lazy vs greedy confusion. In regex engines like the one used by Javascript (NFA engines I believe), non-greedy only gives you the match that is shortest going left to right – from the first left-hand match that fits to the nearest right-hand match. Where there … Read more
How can I write a regex which matches non greedy? [duplicate]
The non-greedy ? works perfectly fine. It’s just that you need to select dot matches all option in the regex engines (regexpal, the engine you used, also has this option) you are testing with. This is because, regex engines generally don’t match line breaks when you use .. You need to tell them explicitly that … Read more
What is the difference between .*? and .* regular expressions?
On greedy vs non-greedy Repetition in regex by default is greedy: they try to match as many reps as possible, and when this doesn’t work and they have to backtrack, they try to match one fewer rep at a time, until a match of the whole pattern is found. As a result, when a match … Read more
What do ‘lazy’ and ‘greedy’ mean in the context of regular expressions?
Greedy will consume as much as possible. From http://www.regular-expressions.info/repeat.html we see the example of trying to match HTML tags with <.+>. Suppose you have the following: <em>Hello World</em> You may think that <.+> (. means any non newline character and + means one or more) would only match the <em> and the </em>, when in … Read more