Regex for nested values

Question

I want a regex that can parse ignoring the nested matches

I mean on this for example:

/*asdasdasd /* asdasdsa */ qweqweqwe */

to match the first "/*" with the last "*/" and not stopping to the first "*/"

Thanks...

Answer 1

RegEx expressions will naturally be greedy, so you can just use:

\/\*.*\*\/

If you wanted it to do what you're afraid of and make the RegEx be lazy and stop after the first match you'd have to add an ? like:

\/\*.*?\*\/

Answer 2

Regular expressions can't count nested items by definition (though implementations do go further than the computer scientific definition).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression#Expressive_power_and_compactness