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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:25:08 -0700
From: Shill <shill@free.fr>
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Subject: regex(3), re_format(7) and shortest match
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Say I have the string:
"yo <a --- </a> hiphop <a +++ </a> fun"

I want to isolate individual "<a ... </a>" subexpressions.

The naive regex I used was: (<a.*</a>)

Of course, that doesn't work since it returns the longest match, in my
case "<a --- </a> hiphop <a +++ </a>".

I battled with bracket expressions and collating elements for three
hours to no avail. Can anyone tell me how to achieve the shortest match?

i.e. the first call to regexec() would return "<a --- </a>" and the
second would return "<a +++ </a>".

Any help will be *greatly* appreciated.

Shill


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