Question

I have a string like this:

This is a {{text}} for {{testing}} PHP {{regular expression}}

I use the following pattern to get an array containing {{text}} , {{testing}} , {{regular expression}}

/\{\{.+\}\}/

But it returns an array with only 1 element:

“{{text}} for {{testing}} php {{regular expression}}”

Also tried this one:

/\{\{(?R)|.+\}\}/

But I get the same result.

What’s wrong with this pattern?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Try using /\{\{.+?\}\}/, notice the ?, the original is greedy, that means it will match as many characters as it can, and if you have .+ it means it will go from the first { to the last }.

The +?, *? are the non-greedy versions of + and *.