Regex problem if single line

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I need to get the type and id of videos from a big text, so to do that I used Regex with following expression

video\('(?<type>.*),(?<id>.*)'\);

now if the text is something like

video('abc,efg');
some text
video('abc,efg');
some text
video('abc,efg');
some text
video('abc,efg');

it works

but if text has single line, like

video('abc,efg');some text video('abc,efg');some text video'abc,efg');some text 
video('abc,efg');

it doesn't work, returns wrong values...

Posted 5-Jan-10 19:37pm

Xmen Real

Updated 6-Jan-10 5:29am

v2

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2 solutions

Solution 1

Replace the .* with a statement that always rejects a '. Your regex will keep going on the line until it finds the last quote, not the next one. I forget what that is, but you can use expresso, which is easy to google, to help build and test regex.

Posted 5-Jan-10 19:52pm

Christian Graus

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AspDotNetDev · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-05T20:44:00

.* is "greedy", but .*? is "lazy". The greedy version will find the longest match. The lazy version will find the shortest match. What you want here is the lazy version.

EDIT: Actually, your question marks should be fine. I forget what that construct does, but I've seen it before.

Edit by Asker :
the working one

video\('(?<type>.*?),(?<id>.*?)'\);

thanks