Regular expression only captures the last occurence of repeated group
python, regex
Solution
This is just how regex works : you defined one capturing group, so there is only one capturing group. When it first captures something, and then captures an other thing, the first captured item is replaced.That's why you only get the last captured one. There is no solution for that that I am aware of...
Problem
I am trying to capture multiple "<attribute> = <value>" pairs with a Python regular expression from a string like this: ``` some(code) ' <tag attrib1="some_value" attrib2="value2" en=""/> ``` The regular expression `'\s*<tag(?:\s*(\w+)\s*=\"(.*?)\")*` is intended to match those pairs multiple times, i.e. return something like ``` "attrib1", "some_value", "attrib2", "value2", "en", "" ``` but it only captures the last occurence: ``` >>> import re >>> re.search("'\s*<tag(?:\s*(\w+)\s*=\"(.*?)\")*", ' some(code) \' <tag attrib1="some_value" attrib2="value2" en=""/>').groups() ('en', '') ``` Focusing on <attrib>="<value>" works: ``` >>> re.findall("(?:\s*(\w+)\s*=\"(.*?)\")", ' some(code) \' <tag attrib1="some_value" attrib2="value2" en=""/>') [('attrib1', 'some_value'), ('attrib2', 'value2'), ('en', '')] ``` so a pragmatic solution might be to test `"<tag" in string` before running this regular expression, but.. Why does the original regex only capture the last occurence and what needs to be changed to make it work as intended?