Prevent optional group from being matched by preceding wildcard

Question

I am trying to read movie names and years. The pattern is as follows: name (year). The name of the movie can have all sorts of characters. And I came up with this pattern:

^(?P<name>.*) \((?P<year>\d*)\)

However, not all movies come with a year after them, so I would like make the year group optional such that it returns blank if only the name of the movie is there.

I know I can make the year optional with ? but then it ends up becoming part of the name group.

@KlausD. Thanks for the feedback; reopened. – tripleee Mar 19 '22 at 10:05 — tripleee, Mar 19 '22 at 10:05

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '22 at 09:49

0

Your first part is too greedy. If you make the second part optional it will match everything. So, * → *?

Then you can use a optional non-capturing group for the year. And don't forget to mark the end:

^(?P<name>.*?)(?: \((?P<year>\d*)\))?$

https://regex101.com/r/zTZd9a/2

answered Mar 19 '22 at 09:49

Klaus D.

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Thanks! This seems to get the job done. However, is there any way for the ```year``` group to return a blank match when there is no year in the string? – Shehryar Ahmed Subhani Mar 19 '22 at 09:57
That would be possible but complicated due to the surrounding parentheses. I'd handle this in code. – Klaus D. Mar 19 '22 at 09:59

Prevent optional group from being matched by preceding wildcard

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