Question

I’d like to be able to match a specific sequence of characters, starting with a particular substring and ending with a particular substring. My positive lookahead regex works if there is only one instance to match on a line, but not if there should be multiple matches on a line. I understand this is because (.+) captures up everything until the last positive lookahead expression is found. It’d be nice if it would capture everything until the first expression is found.

Here is my regex attempt:

@@FOO\[(.*)(?=~~)~~(.*)(?=\]@@)\]@@

Sample input:

@@FOO[abc~~hi]@@    @@FOO[def~~hey]@@

Desired output: 2 matches, with 2 matching groups each (abc, hi) and (def, hey).

Actual output: 1 match with 2 groups (abc~~hi]@@ @@FOO[def, hey)

Is there a way to get the desired output?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Use the question mark, it will match as few times as possible.

@@FOO\[(.*?)(?=~~)~~(.*?)(?=\]@@)\]@@

This one also works but is not as strict although easier to read

@@FOO\[(.*?)~~(.*?)\]@@