Match anything when finding a special character in python regex

Question

I want to use a regex that matches anything but when it finds a special character stop from matching.] I want to use this pattern \*\s*\[\[.* and when become this : ]] it stops matching.

For example it should match * [[anything here]] or * [[]] and it should not match the * [[anythng here]] anything ]] or should not match the * [[]]]]

I want to use this regex in Python for a Wikipedia bot.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '13 at 23:24

2

\*\s*\[\[.*?\]\]

The ? after .* above makes the match reluctant/ungreedy. It will only match up until the first instance of ]] rather than the last.

answered Feb 19 '13 at 23:24

Explosion Pills

188,624
52
326
405

Would that only take the first [[*]] pair ex.) [[[[xxxxxx]]xxxxx]] the first match would be [[[[xxxxxx]]? – eliteslayer Feb 19 '13 at 23:26
1

@eliteslayer it would match `[[[[`, but as far as I can tell that is desirable; to get around that you could do `\*\s*\[\[[^[\]]+?\]\]`, which also requires at least one non-`[`/`]` character – Explosion Pills Feb 19 '13 at 23:29
Thanks dears.This regex is better for my job. – Javad Yousefi Feb 19 '13 at 23:40

Match anything when finding a special character in python regex

1 Answers1