CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Steffen Schindler
Steffen Schindler

Reputation: 795

Regular Expression - Want two matches get only one

I'm working wih a regular expression and have some lines in javascript. My expression should deliver two matches but recognizes only one and I don't know whats the problem.

The Lines in javascript look like this:

if(mode==1) var adresse = "?APPNAME=CampusNet&PRGNAME=ACTION&ARGUMENTS=-A7uh6sBXerQwOCd8VxEMp6x0STE.YaNZDsBnBOto8YWsmwbh7FmWgYGPUHysiL9u0.jUsPVdYQAlvwCsiktBzUaCohVBnkyistIjCR77awL5xoM3WTHYox0AQs65SoHAhMXDJVr7="; else var adresse = "?APPNAME=CampusNet&PRGNAME=ACTION&ARGUMENTS=-AHMqmg-jXIDdylCjFLuixe..udPC2hjn6Kiioq7O41HsnnaP6ylFkQLhaUkaWKINEj4l2JqL2eBSzOpmG.b5Av2AvvUxEinUhMBTt5awdgAL4SkBEgYXGejTGUxcgPE-MfiQjefc=";

My expression looks like this:

(?<Popup>(popUp\(')|(adresse...")).*\?((?<Parameters>APPNAME=CampusNet[^>"']*["']))

I want to have two matches with APPNAME...... as Parameters.

[UPDATE] Like Tim Pietzcker wrote i used the greedy version and should have used the lazy version. while he wrote that i solved it myself by using .? instead of . in the middle so the expression looks like this:

(?<Popup>(popUp\(')|(adresse...")).*?\\?((?<Parameters>APPNAME=CampusNet[^>"']*["']))

That worked. Thanks to Tim Pietzcker

Upvotes: 0

Views: 320

Answers (2)

Tim Pietzcker
Tim Pietzcker

Reputation: 336478

Your regex matches too much - from the very first adresse until the very last " because it uses a greedy quantifier .*.

If you make that quantifier lazy, i. e.

(?<Popup>(popUp\(')|(adresse...")).*?\?((?<Parameters>APPNAME=CampusNet[^>"']*["']))

you get two matches.

Alternatively, if your data allows this, use a different quantifier that only matches non-space characters. This will match faster (but will fail of course if the text you're trying to match could possibly contain spaces):

(?<Popup>(popUp\(')|(adresse..."))\S*\?((?<Parameters>APPNAME=CampusNet[^>"']*["']))

Upvotes: 1

Tomalak
Tomalak

Reputation: 338406

Usually you must apply the regex with the "global" flag to find all matches. I can't really say more until I see the complete code sample you are working with.

Upvotes: 1

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