Question

I have this gigantic ugly string:

J0000000: Transaction A0001401 started on 8/22/2008 9:49:29 AM J0000010: Project name: E:\foo.pf J0000011: Job name: MBiek Direct Mail Test J0000020: Document 1 - Completed successfully 

I’m trying to extract pieces from it using regex. In this case, I want to grab everything after Project Name up to the part where it says J0000011: (the 11 is going to be a different number every time).

Here’s the regex I’ve been playing with:

Project name:\s+(.*)\s+J[0-9]{7}: 

The problem is that it doesn’t stop until it hits the J0000020: at the end.

How do I make the regex stop at the first occurrence of J[0-9]{7}?

Answer 1

Make .* non-greedy by adding ‘?‘ after it:

Project name:\s+(.*?)\s+J[0-9]{7}: