regex match after given string

Question

{{"name":"alpha",
 "age":"23",
 "sex":male",
 "location":"U.S"
 }
 {"name":"beta",
 "age":"23",
 "sex":male",
 "location":"Cambodia"
}}

If I give a name, my regex should return the location for that name. Suppose the name is given as a variable, then I try,

"name":"alpha"[\d\D]*"location":"(.+?)"

I always get the last location with this expression. How can I get the location based on the name? Any help?

Possible duplicate of What do lazy and greedy mean in the context of regular expressions? — revo
– revo, Commented Sep 29, 2016 at 22:06
@trincot What if you only have regexes available? Okay, you can write a full JSON parser but that's a bit overkill for extracting a string from some JSON data. — Mecki
– Mecki, Commented Sep 29, 2016 at 22:10
@user2626431, can you please specify the programming environment you are using? — trincot
– trincot, Commented Sep 30, 2016 at 15:09

Mecki · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-29 22:14:53Z

2

You always get the last one because [\d\D]* is matching everything in between and Regexes try to always match as much as possible. If your Regex engine knows about non-greedy matches (and it looks like it does because you use a non-greedy match at the location yourself: +?), you should be able to use this:

"name":"alpha"[\d\D]*?"location":"(.+?)"

answered Sep 29, 2016 at 22:14

Mecki

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