regular expression - search until 1st occurence of

[Diego Di Filippo]

Hi all,

I have a file with a content like this:

BEGIN
something here!!!
END
ELSE
something here!!!
something here!!!
something here!!!
something here!!!
GO

BEGIN
something here!!!
END
ELSE
something here!!!
something here!!!
GO

I need to match only all ELSE GO block.

my regex is this
https://regex101.com/r/hjCIiv/1

but all code from the first else is selected.

Please help!

D.

[guy038]

Hello, @diego-di-filippo and All,

Thanks for doing a try, before posting ! You weren’t very far from the correct regex, anyway !

So, instead of ^ELSE\b(\r\n.*){1,}\bGO, just try with the regex ^ELSE\b(\r\n.*?){1,}\bGO

Personally, I would prefer the shorter syntax (?s-i)^ELSE\R.+?\RGO\R

Explanations :

• The first part (?s-i) modifiers means that :

  • The dot will match any single character ( standard one or EOL one => MULTI- lines match ) because of the s modifier

  • The search will be performed, by the regex engine, in an non-insensitive way, because of the -i modifier

• Then, the part ^ELSE\R tries to match the upper-case word ELSE, at beginning of a line, and followed with its line-break character(s) \R ( = \r\n in Windows files, \n in Unix files or \r in Mac files )

• At the end of the regex, the part GO\R matches for the upper-case word GO, followed with its line-break, too

• In the middle, the part .+?\R matches the shortest non-null range of any character, followed with a line-break, till the GO word. Note that, if you would omit the ? symbol, this time, it would search for the longest non-null range of chars, till the word GO !

Best Regards,

guy038

[Scott Sumner]

@Diego-Di-Filippo

So it seems your original try at a correct regex was simply missing a ? after the .*.

Here’s the core difference:

.* <— Match any single character that is NOT a line break character between zero and unlimited times, as MANY times as possible, GIVING BACK as needed (GREEDY)

.*? <— Match any single character that is NOT a line break character between zero and unlimited times, as FEW times as possible, EXPANDING as needed (LAZY)

[Diego Di Filippo]

thank you guys!!!
D.