c# regex nearest character

Question

Im using a regex expression on a string and i have the issue that there is nothing to the left of the string which doesnt reaccur in the string multiple times.

">something">tofind</a>

this part:

</a>

is unique in the string but the

">

part to the left is NOT

how can i make an expression take the first "> to the left of the (to be matched) value and not the first one from the start of the string

\">(.*)</a>

doesnt work properly due to that and gives me ">tofind and rightfully so.

any solution? i would like the solution to my problem be inside the expression and not additional code. due to my inabillty to hardcode a fix for every special problem i might have with strings.

thanks alot!

code processing the string

                    var regex = new Regex(regexstring);

                    var matches = regex.Matches(line);

                    foreach (var singleuser in matches.Cast<Match>().ToList())
                    {
                        allusernames.Add(singleuser.Groups[1].Value);
                    }

As a side note, [CsQuery](https://github.com/jamietre/CsQuery) is an awesome way to process HTML in C#! — Roman Starkov, Apr 30 '15 at 15:48
possible duplicate of [RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — AeroX, Apr 30 '15 at 15:51
Is `">something">tofind` the literal thing to process and you are looking for the text `something` within that? — ΩmegaMan, Apr 30 '15 at 16:00

karthik manchala · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-30T16:00:23.757

1

You can use the following..

\">([^>]*)</a>

Explanation:

\"> match literal \">
([^>]*) match all characters other than > ([^>] being negated set)
</a> match literal </a>

See DEMO

edited Apr 30 '15 at 16:00

answered Apr 30 '15 at 15:47

karthik manchala

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my hero! can you briefly explain what you have done? – tim_po Apr 30 '15 at 15:57
Good explanation, it was what the user needed. – ΩmegaMan Apr 30 '15 at 23:58

c# regex nearest character

1 Answers1