Regex: Match until first occurrence met

Question

What I am trying is to match until first occurrence of & met. Right now it is matching only the last occurrence of &.

My regular expression is

(?!^)(http[^\\]+)\&

And I'm trying to match against this text:

https://www.google.com/url?rct3Dj&sa3Dt&url3Dhttp://business.itbusinessnet.com/article/WorldStage-Supports-Massive-4K-Video-Mapping-at-Adobe-MAX-with-Christie-Boxer-4K-Projectors---4820052&ct3Dga&cd3DCAEYACoTOTEwNTAyMzI0OTkyNzU0OTI0MjIaMTBmYTYxYzBmZDFlN2RlZjpjb206ZW46VVM&usg3DAFQjCNE6oIhIxR6qRMBmLkHOJTKLvamLFg

What I need is:

http://business.itbusinessnet.com/article/WorldStage-Supports-Massive-4K-Video-Mapping-at-Adobe-MAX-with-Christie-Boxer-4K-Projectors---4820052

Click for the codebase.

Answer 1

Use the non-greedy mode like this:

/(?!^)(http[^\\]+?)&/
//               ^

In non-greedy mode (or lazy mode) the match will be as short as possible.

If you want to get rid ot the & then just wrap it in a lookahead group so it won't be in the match like this:

/(?!^)(http[^\\]+?)(?=&)/
//                 ^^  ^

Or you could optimize the regular expression as @apsillers suggested in the comment bellow like this:

/(?!^)(http[^\\&]+)/

Note: & is not a special character so you don't need to escape it,