Reputation:
I need to take certain part from the string with regex non greedy approach. I am manipulating following string :
<a href="/guidance/">Hi</a> </li><li > <a href="/news/institutional/2012/05/000001asdf">Thanks</a>
from which I need to get :
<a href="/news/institutional/2012/05/000001asdf">Thanks</a>
I've been trying with following regex :
<a.*?news/.*?/(\d{1,4}\/[01]?\d)?.*?</a>
but it gets all string instead of part of string mentioned above.As far as I understand .*?
capture shortest match but it's not working as expected.
Upvotes: 0
Views: 513
Reputation:
This [^>]
is a negative character class, any character except angle
brace. This stops a non-greedy .*?
from matching the end of the tag
(turning it semi-greedy) when it can't find the specific news
anchor.
# @"(?s)<a[^>]*?news/[^>/]*?/(\d{1,4}(?:/\d+)*)?[^>]*?>.*?</a>"
(?s) # Modifier, Dot-Matches any character
<a # Open 'a' tag
[^>]*? # Any non '>' character
news/ # Need 'news/'
[^>/]*? # Any non '>' or '/' character
/ # Need '/'
( # (1 start), Optional Date ?
\d{1,4} # 1-4 digit year
(?: / \d+ )* # month / day, etc ..
)? # (1 end)
[^>]*? # Any non '>' character
> # End Open '>' tag
.*? # Anything
</a> # Close 'a' tag
C# example:
string news = @"
<a href=""/guidance/"">Hi</a> </li><li > <a href=""/news/institutional/2012/05/000001asdf"">Thanks</a>
<a href=""/rintime/"">Hi</a> <a href=""/news/google/asdf"">GOOGLE</a>
";
Regex RxNews = new Regex(@"(?s)<a[^>]*?news/[^>/]*?/(\d{1,4}(?:/\d+)*)?[^>]*?>.*?</a>" );
Match _mNews = RxNews.Match( news );
while (_mNews.Success)
{
Console.WriteLine("Found: {0}\r\nGroup 1 = {1}\r\n", _mNews.Groups[0].Value, _mNews.Groups[1].Value);
_mNews = _mNews.NextMatch();
}
Output:
Found: <a href="/news/institutional/2012/05/000001asdf">Thanks</a>
Group 1 = 2012/05/000001
Found: <a href="/news/google/asdf">GOOGLE</a>
Group 1 =
Upvotes: 1