How to match all characters (as few as possible) between two strings?

Question

I am trying to write a regex that matches a comment that begins with a (* and ends at the first occurence of a *)

(* comment *)

From other posts on stack overflow about matching between parenthesis I put together the following regex.

\(\*(([^*\)])*)\*\)

This works as long as there are no * or ) characters within the comment. However, I want to allow these characters in a comment as long as they are not next to each other.

The following are all valid comments.

(*****)

(*()*)

(*)(*()**)

And a notable invalid comment is

(*)

I tried some stuff using lookaheads but to no avail. A pointer in the right direction would be appreciated.

Possible duplicate of [RegEx How to find text between two strings](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7360686/regex-how-to-find-text-between-two-strings) — mickmackusa, Sep 24 '18 at 07:25
Please state the regexpression engine you use. Sorokin's? The one packages with newer Delphi's ? — Marco van de Voort, Sep 24 '18 at 08:32
I didn't vote for duplicate because Delphi specific regex engines are often more limited, and a specific question can be on topic. The question is abandoned, not duplicate IMHO — Marco van de Voort, Oct 05 '18 at 08:19

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 24 '18 at 03:19

0

Try with this

match any string which contain an open parentheses followed by any characters any numbers of times followed by a closing parenthesis

\(\*.+\*\)

answered Sep 24 '18 at 03:19

Yves Kipondo

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But `(**)` is a valid (but empty) comment too, so why not just `\(\*(.*)\*\)`? The `(.*)` part captures the content of the comment. – Rudy Velthuis Sep 24 '18 at 09:31

How to match all characters (as few as possible) between two strings?

1 Answers1