Question

I need to get information on variables and the only thing I have is the variable name. In this case let’s say I need to get the chunk that belongs to SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE (every chunck starts with <0> and ends with <0>)

In other words how can I get the chunk <0>....SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE.....<0>

Note I do not want to have <0> ...... <0> ..... SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE .... <0>

<0>
    temp
<0>
    fo0
<0>
    BLA BLA BLA
    kjfsd
    foodskjdsf
    kj
<0>
    someVariable
<0>
    SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE
<0>

So far I have tried:

<0>[\s\S]*?SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE[\s\S]*?<0>

that finds <0> and then continues until it finds SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE and stops until <0>

note that will select everything

my temporary solution is:

<0>[\s\S]{1,25}SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE[\s\S]*?<0>

this restricts the selection to less than 25 characters. I think this is to risky because there might be two chuncks smaller than 25 characters

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EDIT

In other words I want to end up with:

<0>
   SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE
<0>

and the only thing I have is SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE knowing that every chunk starts and ends with <0>

Answer 1

Instead of using .*? you could use (?:(?!<0>).)*, like so:

<0>(?:(?!<0>).)*SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE(?:(?!<0>).)*<0>

But you might as well be better off splitting the string on <0> and checking which parts match SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE.

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Note that the expression will never match the second “chunk” in:

<0> SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE   will match
<0> SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE   will not match
<0>

Because the second <0> is consumed by the expression, not allowing it to match. (The splitting approach does not have this problem.)

You can fix that by using a lookahead tho:

<0>(?:(?!<0>).)*SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE(?:(?!<0>).)*(?=<0>)

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If you want . to match line breaks as well, add (?s) in the beginning of the expression, like so:

(?s)<0>(?:(?!<0>).)*SOME_LARGE_VARIABLE(?:(?!<0>).)*(?=<0>)