Question

How can I successfully parse the text below in that format to parse just

To: User <[e-mail]> 

and

To: <[e-mail]>

When I try to parse the text below with

/To:.*<[A-Z0-9._+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}>/mi

It grabs

Message-ID <[e-mail]>, 

which I dont want in my answer.

I have tried using $ and \z and neither work. What am I doing wrong?

Information to parse

To: User <[e-mail]> Message-ID <[e-mail]>
To:

<[e-mail]>

This is my parsing information in Rubular http://rubular.com/r/DQMQC4TQLV

Answer 1

Since you haven’t specified exactly what your tool/language is, assumptions must be made.

In general regex pattern matching tends to be aggressive, matching the longest possible pattern. Your pattern starts off with .*, which means that you’re going to match the longest possible string that ENDS WITH the remainder of your pattern <[A-Z0-9._+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}>, which was matched with <[e-mail]> from the Message-ID.

Both Apalala’s and nhahtdh’s comments give you something to try. Avoid the all-inclusive .* at the start and use something that’s a bit more specific: match leading spaces, or match anything EXCEPT the first part of what you’re really interested in.