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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 19:49:40 +0200
From: Roman Neuhauser <neuhauser@mobil.cz>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: regex(3), re_format(7) and shortest match
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> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:25:08 -0700
> From: Shill <shill@free.fr>
> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
> Subject: regex(3), re_format(7) and shortest match
> 
> 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>".

    Try this: (<a[^]]</a>)

    HTH,

    Roman
   

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