Match regular expression without slash in URL-like string

Question

I have the following regular expression #^en/cities/(.*?)/$# and I want it to match anything, but stop at the first slash.

I.e. it should match 'paris' but not 'paris/france' if someone manages to type that URL.

I thought I already had it as non-greedy with the questionmark, but apparently not.

Andrew Cheong · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-10 09:45:54Z

2

Use a negated character class.

#^en/cities/([^/]+)/$#

In your regex the non-greediness failed because you anchored the last slash to the end ($). Removing that would also make your regex work:

#^en/cities/.*?/#

answered Nov 10, 2012 at 9:45

Andrew Cheong

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3 Comments

Gumbo Over a year ago

No need for the ? in your first example.

Andrew Cheong Over a year ago

@ridgerunner - Hm, I think you might be mistaken. The delimeter here is # (in case that's what you missed) so the non-greedy quantifier must seek until a / is matched.

ridgerunner Over a year ago

You are absolutely correct. I did miss the /. Comment retracted. Sorry bout that! +1

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