Regex: Expression selecting more than expected

Question

I am using the following regex

'/\@(.*)\((.*)\)/'

And I am trying to get @ONE(TWO) one and two from the expression. Which works as long as it's the only time that it can be found before an end of line (I think)

I am quite green with regex and I really cannot understand what I am doing wrong.

What I need is to be able to get all the ONE/TWO couples. Can you please help me.

I am working with PHP and the following function

$parsed_string = preg_replace_callback(
    // Placeholder for not previously created article
    // Pattern example: @George Ioannidis(person)             
    '/\@(.*)\((.*)\)/', 
    function ($matches) {
        return $this->parsePlaceholders( $matches );
    },
    $string
);

The results I am getting from https://regexr.com

can you please add the original link to your regex website? – Ashish Ranjan Oct 28 '17 at 14:20 — Ashish Ranjan, Oct 28 '17 at 14:20

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 28 '17 at 14:21

1

* expression is greedy by default. For example such regexp (.*)a will return you bdeabde result on bdeabdea string. You should use special ? symbol for non-greedy * behavior. In your case try to use /\@(.*?)\((.*?)\)/ regexp.

answered Oct 28 '17 at 14:21

Ivan Kalita

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Thank you very much - it worked like a charm. Thank you for explaining "greedy" It makes sense now. – Dimitris Romeo Havlidis Oct 28 '17 at 14:26

Regex: Expression selecting more than expected

1 Answers1