javascript regex matches the second instead of the first space

Question

I'm using the following javascript regexes to find a pattern in a string containing html.

sHTML = sHTML.replace(new RegExp("td>" + sFindPhrase + "[^\'\"\\\/\>\<]* ", "gi"), "<span id='spanFnd'></span><span style='background-color: orange'>$&######");
sHTML = sHTML.replace(new RegExp("[^\'\"\\\/\>\<]" + sFindPhrase + "[^\'\"\\\/\>\<]* ", "gi"), "<span id='spanFnd'></span><span style='background-color: orange'>$&######");

so if sHTML is:

<td>brou ha ha </td><td>John May lives&nbsp;</td><td> blablabla</td>

and the user has typed Jo shouldn't it match the whole John substring? But it matches John May. That is it goes to the second space character it finds in the string, it doesn't stop to the first. Why and how can I solve this ?

Thank you in advance.

For those who have downvoted my question: it doesn't matter if the string contains html or plain text. Even with plain text it still doesn't work as it should.

[Don't parse HTML with regex!](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/418066) — Biffen, Sep 04 '14 at 12:11
@Biffen, it doesn't matter, even if the string contains plain text, it still doesn't work as it should. Just tried it out. — MirrorMirror, Sep 04 '14 at 12:14
Can you just edit, what exactly should be matched. Only `John` ? — Jonny 5, Sep 04 '14 at 12:21
Tried to make it lazy by putting a `?` after the `*` quantifier? `*? ` — Jonny 5, Sep 04 '14 at 12:29
If you didn't want the space to be matched, put it in the negative character class `[^\'\"\\\/\>\< ]*` — asontu, Sep 04 '14 at 12:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '14 at 12:36

1

Try to make it lazy, by putting a ? after the * quantifier:

[^\'\"\\\/><]*?[ ]

Test at regex101

answered Sep 04 '14 at 12:36

Jonny 5

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javascript regex matches the second instead of the first space

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