RegEx is Too Greedy

Question

I have requirement to validate a range. The input is in the following format:

string example1 = "anydate between 20100101 ~~ 20100101";
string example2 = "anydate between 20100101 and 20100101";
string example3 = "docid between 1 ~~ 2";

I'm using the following regex:

\b(\w)*(?<operator>Between|contains)\b(?<prefix>.*).*?(?<OP>~~|and)[  ]?\b(?.*)\b

When user inputs "anydate between 20100101 ~~ 20100101 and test1" it is failing and it captures till test1.

How to make my regex less greedy and only caputure till 20100101?

FlyingStreudel · Answer 1 · 2011-07-29T21:00:24.540

0

You could try

anydate\b(?<op>(between|contains))\b(?<first>[0-9]*)\b(?<op2>(~~|and))\b(?<second>[0-9]*)

edit Guessing at whats needed but:

(?<func>\w+)\b(?<op>(between|contains))\b(?<first>\w+)\b(?<op2>(~~|and))\b(?<second>\w+)

edited Jul 29 '11 at 21:00

answered Jul 29 '11 at 20:55

FlyingStreudel

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Thanks but search criteria could be date or any other field. I have taken date as example. – Naga Jul 29 '11 at 20:57
Then what exactly is the specification? – FlyingStreudel Jul 29 '11 at 20:58

RegEx is Too Greedy

1 Answers1