Regex to stop at the first occurrence of #STRING# inside the regex

Question

*Note: The output of the Array() is a PHP print_r()* I have this HTML tag: ```

SOME_VALUE_I_WANT ``` I really want to extract this with RegEx and don't want to use HTML parsers in this case. I do this Regex (I use the s-flag to ignore the file's newlines): ``` \\\ ``` Problem now is that the Regex doesn't stop at the first found close TR tag, but I want it to. I know it probably has something todo with assertions, only I don't know how to. ``` Array ( [0] =>

SOME_VALUE_I_WANT

[1] => 4 ) ``` The basic examples like: /[^<]*/ won't work in this case. Is there also a way to tell regex something like: ``` /[^…

Accepted Answer

The problem is greediness. `.*` consumes as much as it can. You can make it ungreedy by appending `?`: ``` ~~s ``` Also, as you can see, there is really no need to do so much escaping. It only hinders legibility. An alternative way to make repetition ungreedy, is to use the modifier `U`, which makes all repetition ungreedy globally in the whole pattern. I prefer the local variant (using `?`), though. In any case, there is a different possibility which mimics `[^A_STRING]*` (which doesn't work, because it matches any string of characters, that do not include `A`, `_`, `S`, `T`, `R`, `I`, `N` or `G`). You can use a negative lookahead at every position of the repetition: ``` (?:(?!A_STRING).)* ``` (substitute this for `.*` or `.*?`). It should be equivalent in most cases, but execution time might differ. Plus, it's a little harder to decipher.

Regex to stop at the first occurrence of #STRING# inside the regex

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