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Let's say I have a multi-line string like this:
STARTFRUIT
banana
ENDFRUIT
STARTFRUIT
avocado
ENDFRUIT
STARTVEGGIE
rhubarb
ENDVEGGIE
STARTFRUIT
lime
ENDFRUIT
I want to search for all fruit, no veggies. I try this:
MatchCollection myMatches = Regex.Matches(tbBlob.Text, "STARTFRUIT.*ENDFRUIT", RegexOptions.Singleline);
foreach (var myMatch in myMatches)
{
Forms.MessageBox.Show(String.Format("Match: {0}", myMatch), "Match", Forms.MessageBoxButtons.OK, Forms.MessageBoxIcon.Information);
}
The problem is, instead of returning me an array of three matches, it gives me a big match encompassing the first STARTFRUIT at the beginning and the last ENDFRUIT at the end. Is there a way to "minimalize" the match search? I don't see any help in RegexOptions.
497
'Greedy' means match longest possible string. 'Lazy' means match shortest possible string.
You make it non-greedy by using ". *?" When using the latter construct, the regex engine will, at every step it matches text into the "." attempt to match whatever make come after the ". *?" .
In C#, Regular Expression is a pattern which is used to parse and check whether the given input text is matching with the given pattern or not. In C#, Regular Expressions are generally termed as C# Regex. The . Net Framework provides a regular expression engine that allows the pattern matching.
A regular expression followed by a question mark (?) matches zero or one occurrences of the regular expression. Two regular expressions concatenated match an occurrence of the first followed by an occurrence of the second.
Use a non-greedy modifier (a question mark) after the quantifier:
"STARTFRUIT.*?ENDFRUIT"
^
add this
Note that the question-mark here has a different meaning here than when it is used as a quantifier, where it means "match zero or one".
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