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Asked: 2026-05-31T02:58:47+00:00

I’m trying to extract a portion of text from a string. I need to

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I’m trying to extract a portion of text from a string. I need to grab everything before the characters " (test)" first appear (Note the whitespace before the first parentheses), but excluding the " (test)" portion itself.

The string I’m testing this on:

"14 asdasddasddasdas twetwe .e.wrwe r342#¤¤¤¤ 822 (test) (test) (test)"

I’m using the pattern ^.+(?= \(test\)), but apparently this matches everything until the last " (test)" occurrence. I would like it to match the string:

 "14 asdasddasddasdas twetwe .e.wrwe r342#¤¤¤¤ 822 "

What am I doing wrong here?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The + symbol means “one or more times — and preferably as many times as possible”. (It’s “greedy”.) You need to use the special “nongreedy” or “lazy” equivalent, +?, which means “one or more times — and preferably as few times as possible”. (Note: this is not to be confused with the use of ? to mean “zero or one times — and better one time than zero”.) So, your pattern would be:

    ^.+?(?= \(test\))
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