Regex minimal match

Asked Jun 22 '20 at 13:05

Active Jun 22 '20 at 13:50

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I'm trying to write a regex in Python that will match a single sentence (from . to .) containing a specific word. The regex I wrote is r"\..*?hello.*?\.". As you can see I'm using the non-greedy quantifier. The text I'm matching against is:

This is the 1st sentence. This is the 2nd. This is the 3rd, hello, world. This is the 4th.

(here's a link to regex101)

I'd like the match to be This is the 3rd, hello, world. , but though the *? quantifier is non-greedy, the match includes also the 2nd sentence. What am I missing?

asked Jun 22 '20 at 13:05

Gino

3

`\.[^.]*hello.*?\.` or `\.[^.]*hello[^.]*\.` would do, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/21478871/3832970 – Wiktor Stribiżew Jun 22 '20 at 13:06
@WiktorStribiżew Please post this as an answer! :) – dmuensterer Jun 22 '20 at 13:11
@WiktorStribiżew, thanks! that's perfect! – Gino Jun 22 '20 at 13:19
My answer is [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16577432/non-greedy-string-regular-expression-matching/40556433#40556433) – Wiktor Stribiżew Jun 22 '20 at 13:54

Regex minimal match

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