Multiple match and replace

Question

I have this string:

<x>&nbsp;<span class='var'>or<tg>test<pk>testing</pk></tg><tx>or</tx><tg>teste<pk>testando</pk></tg></span></x>

I'm using this pattern:

<tg>(.*)<pk>(.*)</pk></tg>

But it's replacing from the first <tg> to the last one, ignoring the </tg> in the middle.

My replacement string:

<a href='def.aspx?&word=$2'>$1</a>

Have a look at this [famous question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags?rq=1) — Sriram Sakthivel, Jun 04 '14 at 15:54

Andrew Whitaker · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-04T16:06:50.060

2

.* is greedy so it's continuing even after finding matches. You can tweak your regular expression slightly to change this behavior:

<tg>([^<]*)<pk>([^<]*)</pk></tg>

(that is, allow anything except for an opening < inside of <tg> and <pk> tags using a negated character class)

or:

<tg>(.*?)<pk>(.*?)</pk></tg>

(use the lazy quantifier with * to make the engine match as few occurrences as possible)

edited Jun 04 '14 at 16:06

answered Jun 04 '14 at 16:01

Andrew Whitaker

1 Answers1