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To all you REGEX gurus out there

Posted At : March 3, 2007 10:10 AM | Posted By : David
Related Categories: ColdFusion

I have a block of text I am working with. Here is an example of it:

the start of the text here
<a href="Some text here" target="_blank" >Some text here</a>
some more text here
<a href="http://someurl">here is some stuff</a>
and some more text

I want to run a regex to get the "Some test here" from between the "a" tags.

When I use the regex "(<a>)(.*)(</a>)" in to The Regex Coach it happily finds the "Some text Here" a tags.

When I run this code:

<cfsavecontent variable="thisText">
the start of the text here
<a href="Some text here" target="_blank" >Some text here</a>
some more text here
<a href="http://someurl">here is some stuff</a>
and some more text
</cfsavecontent>

<cfset aBlock = reFindNoCase("(<a href=")(.*)(" target="_blank" >)(.*)(</a>)",thisText,1,1)>

<cfset aPortion = mid(thisText, aBlock.pos[3], aBlock.len[3])>

<cfdump var="#aPortion#">

I am getting from the "Some text here..." to the end a tag that is at the end of "...here is some stuff"

Can any of you regex Gurus spot my (obvious to you) mistake?

Update:

Been meaning to do this for a while... as per the comments from Steve the correct answer is:

(<a href=")(.*?)(" target="_blank" >)(.*?)(</a>)

note the "?". [Steve Quote]The "?" qualifies the statement as non-greedy[/Steve Quote]

Thank you Steve!

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Comments

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I think you want this regex instead: (<a>)(.*?)(</a>)

The "?" qualifies the statement as non-greedy, which is what you want.

# Posted By Steve Bryant | 3/3/07 12:05 PM

Thanks Steve!
I won't pretend I understand what you just said, but it works.

Regex is still an unknown to me!

so the "?" says, "find the first </a> one, then stop"?

# Posted By David | 3/3/07 12:14 PM

David,

That's right.

The concept of "greedy" indicates whether the expression will find as much text as it can or as little. A greedy expression will find the largest match that it can, a non-greedy match will find the smallest.

So, the "?" makes the expression non-greedy so it will find the smallest match (in your case, just one link).

# Posted By Steve Bryant | 3/3/07 12:21 PM

Thanks Steve.
So would that suggest The Regex Coach got it wrong?

# Posted By David | 3/3/07 12:48 PM

I haven't ever used Regex Coach, so I can't say if it got it wrong or if it just doesn't ask for specific enough information to get the answer you wanted in this case.

# Posted By Steve Bryant | 3/6/07 2:45 AM

Fair enuff.
Thanks again for your help Steve!

# Posted By David | 3/6/07 5:20 PM

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David Harris's Technology Blog

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