Why expression matching whole sentence

Question

I'm new in regular expression using this website but facing a problem. Scenario is there are some elements in angle brackets and every element has an attribute, After every element a period (.) symbol is given like this.

<a value = "GoodVal">.<b value = "BadVal" size = "10">.<c height = "auto">.<d size = "3">.<e strength = "200%">.<f a1 = "1" a2 = "2" a3 = "3"></f></e></d></c></b></a>

My Expression is:<a.*?>\.<b.*?>\.<d.*?> but why its consider as a matched. In sentence after b element c element is written not d element.

Related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags?rq=1 — Jordan Running, Feb 15 '17 at 17:44

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

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First of all, please see here for why not to use regular expressions to parse XML/HTML.

But to still answer your question: The . matches (almost) any character (but not line breaks by default without the appropriate modifier), that's why .* matches everything between the closing bracket of your b element and the starting bracket of your d element.

It's always a good idea to use a page like http://www.regextester.com/?fam=96920 to visualize your expressions, especially if you're new to working with RegEx.

To only include the tags of a, b, and d, as you requested, you can use this regex:

/<[abd].*?\./g

See also on regextester. The g modifier is needed in JavaScript to capture all matches. You could also match all tags and then, while iterating over them, decide which ones to keep and which ones not.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

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answered Feb 15 '17 at 17:44

Constantin Groß

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I don't want to do parsing. I'm just learning how to use regular expression correctly and how to match a following sentence. – Harvey Clue Feb 15 '17 at 17:56
How to stop expression to match whole string. – Harvey Clue Feb 15 '17 at 18:31
This whole sentence is in one string not a global text and don't want sub matches. I'm just asking about how can i prevent my expression to not match next element until i correctly enter with same sequence. like this `\.\.\.\. – Harvey Clue Feb 15 '17 at 19:23
If you don't want sub matches - you want to only match and and then cut off if a follows instead of a ? Or you want the match to return nothing? – Constantin Groß Feb 15 '17 at 19:25

Why expression matching whole sentence

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