Question

Possible Duplicate:
RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

I tested my regex in rubular.com and it works, but when I run the code it behaves differently.

I want to parse whole paragraphs out of some HTML code

Here is my regex

description = ad_page.body.scan(/(?<=<span id="preview-local-desc">).+(?=<\/span>)/m)

Here is some of the HTML source

<span id="preview-local-desc"> I want to pick up everything typed here.
Paragraphs, everything.
</span>

The match begins where I need it to but then it keeps matching all the way to the end of the document.

Answer 1

Aside from the fact that you shouldn’t parse HTML with regex, you want non-greedy matching:

/(?<=<span id="preview-local-desc">).+?(?=<\/span>)/m