Question

I have this RegEx:

('.+')

It has to match character literals like in C. For example, if I have 'a' b 'a' it should match the a’s and the '‘s around them.

However, it also matches the b also (it should not), probably because it is, strictly speaking, also between '‘s.

Here is a screenshot of how it goes wrong (I use this for syntax highlighting):

I’m fairly new to regular expressions. How can I tell the regex not to match this?

Answer 1

It is being greedy and matching the first apostrophe and the last one and everything in between.

This should match anything that isn’t an apostrophe.

('[^']+')

Another alternative is to try non-greedy matches.

('.+?')