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From: Mel Flynn <mel.flynn+fbsd.questions@mailing.thruhere.net>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 18:26:57 +0200
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Cc: Drew Tomlinson <drew@mykitchentable.net>
Subject: Re: Regex Help - Greedy vs. Non-Greedy
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On Wednesday 09 September 2009 18:15:25 Drew Tomlinson wrote:
> I'm trying to do a search and replace in vim.  I have lines like this:
> http://site1/dir/;
> http://site2/dir/;LastName, FirstName;Phone;
> http://site3/dir/;LastName, FirstName;
> http://site4/dir/;
>
> I'm want to match "http:*" and stop matching at the first ";".  My basic
> regex is:
>
> /http:.\+;/
>
> But it's matching *all* the semi-colons.  Thus I've Googled and tried
> various incatations to try and make my regex "non-greedy" but I can't
> seem to come up with the correct combination.
>
> How can I write a regex that stops matching at the first semi-colon?

AFAIK, there's no greediness modifier in vim regex. However, you can use 
character classes to solve your problem:

%s/http:[^;]\+/foo/g
-- 
Mel