Question

Hello ,

I have text and I need to find in it a string start with “start” and end with “end”. only the first occurrence.
if the string is :

 "just test ... bla ...bla start some txt .... end more text "
"just test ... bla ...bla start some txt .... end more text ".match(/start(.*)end/)

i am getting the correct answer ,array with 2 items:

 array[0]="start some txt .... end"
 array[1]=" some txt .... "

this is perfect.
when the text contains more the one “end”:

"just test ... bla ...bla start some txt .... end more text  xxxx end blue fff  ...end"

I cant get the right string whats happening is that the .match(/start(.*)end/) return all the string from the first “start” to last “end” instead of to the first “end” :
return : "start some txt .... end more text xxxx end blue fff ...end"
what I need is only the first occurrence :

"start some txt .... end"

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

/start(.*?)end/

the ? makes it “non-greedy” meaning it’ll match as little as possible