REGEX---Please HELP; I think this simple

[sfullman]

I'm trying to find a way to "say something" in REGEX but it's not working. PLEASE HELP ME OUT.

If I had the following string:

<select name=1>
<option value=a >label a
<option value=b >label b
</select>

<select name=2>
<option value=c >label c
<option value=d >label d
<option value=e >label e
</select>

You've got two select elements. If I do a regex search using this pattern:

(<select)[^{>]>{1}.(</select>)}

I'm not going to get two instances, I'm going to get one containing both, because the regex engine in "greedy" for the largest possible string.

Well, I know in the brackets you can use ^ to exclude certain characters, but how can you exclude certain exact combinations?

In other words, in English I would say:

"Find a <select tag, then stuff in the tag, then a closing >, and then ANYTHING EXCEPT ANOTHER SELECT TAG, and then a closing </select> tag."

I can do everything except for that "ANYTHING EXCEPT ANOTHER SELECT TAG" phrase. Is there any way to do this? I'm just trying to pull out data in the fewest possible steps.

Sam Fullman,
Compass Point Media

[retoknaak]

Have you triyed adding a ? to .*

(<select)[^{>]>{1}.?(</select>)}

This makes the .* ungreedy, and should also stop before the next </select>

[retoknaak]

This question is interesting to me also.
The only way I know is brute force attack:
([^{e][x][c][l][u][d][e])}

I hope there are better ways!
Anyone could tell us please?

[retoknaak]

In the DOC: pcre.pattern.syntax.html!!!

Lookbehind assertions start with (?<= for positive asser-
tions and (?<! for negative assertions. For example,

   (?<!foo)bar

does find an occurrence of "bar" that is not preceded by
"foo". The contents of a lookbehind assertion are restricted
such that all the strings it matches must have a fixed
length. However, if there are several alternatives, they do
not all have to have the same fixed length. Thus

   (?<=bullock|donkey)

is permitted, but

   (?<!dogs?|cats?)

causes an error at compile time.