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regexreluctant-quantifiers

Confused about a regex

I want to match expressions that begin with "${" and end with "}" in the expression ${foo} and ${bar}.

The regex .*\$\{.+\}.* matches the entire expression, of course.

My understanding was that changing to the reluctant quantifier would solve the problem, but I find that .*\$\{.+?\}.* also matches the entire expression.

What am I missing?

Solution

  • As well as the suggestion by 1800 INFORMATION i would change the dot to something else:

    \$\{[^\}]+\}

    As the + will match as much as it can even a } if you have two occurances of ${} in the string.