I wouldn’t have expected that ```"<test>.*&l...

# announcements

[Stephan Schroeder]

I wouldn’t have expected that

"<test>.*</test>".toRegex()
    .find("aaaa<test>5</test>aaaa<test>4</test>aaaa")
    ?.let { println("match: ${it.value}") }

doesn’t return the minimal first match <test>5</test>, but the longer one <test>5</test>aaaa<test>4</test> given that the documentation says: “Returns the first match of a regular expression” here: https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin.text/-regex/find.html

And unfortunately findAll equally just returns a single match instead of two. Is there a way for me to fix this?

Playground link: https://pl.kotl.in/HA-C02_Gy

[Stephan Schroeder]

I’m aware that I can build the findAll-functionality by using indexOf and substring but using regexes would be nicer (I don’t want to reinvent the wheel)

[arekolek]

that’s more of a question about regexes than Kotlin I think, you want to use .*?

[Matej Drobnič]

yeah regex is greedy by default (it wants to match longest possible sequence first). .*? should work

[Stephan Schroeder]

yes!!! .*? does work 😃👍

[arekolek]

“greedy” vs “lazy” quantifiers is the keyword

[Matteo Mirk]

Stephan you may want to read about that here: https://www.regular-expressions.info/repeat.html, the paragraph “Watch Out for The Greediness!” tells exactly your story. * and ? are greedy quantifiers.

[Matteo Mirk]

Also related 😆 : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454