Why is this non-greedy regex grabbing more than I want?

Question

I would think this should return "state,country" but it's returning "country" ``` System.out.println("city,state,country".replaceAll("(.*,)?", "")); ``` Why is it working this way, and how do I make it return "state,country". I want this answer as a regex.

Accepted Answer

- if you want to make `.*` to be non-greedy you need to add `?` right after `*`.

- `replaceAll` will replace all occurrences of matching parts, so you should probably use `replaceFirst`

try

```
System.out.println("city,state,country".replaceFirst(".*?,", ""));
```

output:

```
state,country
```

If you can't use `replaceFirst` and need to stay with `replaceAll` then @Reimeus answer is probably what you are looking for.

Why is this non-greedy regex grabbing more than I want?

Solution

Problem