Text Processingflags: g

Lazy / Non-Greedy Quantifier

Demonstrate lazy quantifiers `+?` by matching the SHORTEST HTML-like tag rather than the longest greedy span.

Try it in RegexPro →

Available in

JSSupported

JavaScript / ECMAScript

Browser-native RegExp. Default if you don't pick.

PYSupported

Python (re)

CPython stdlib `re`. Unicode-aware `\w` and `\d` by default.

GOSupported

Go (RE2)

Linear-time matching. No backreferences or lookarounds.

Pattern

regexengine-agnostic
<.+?>   (flags: g)

Raw source: <.+?>

How it works

<.+?> matches an opening `<`, then ONE OR MORE characters (`.+`), then the next `>`. The `?` after `+` makes the quantifier lazy — it stops at the first `>` it sees, instead of the greedy default that would consume everything up to the LAST `>` in the string.

Examples

Input

<b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i>

Matches

  • <b>
  • </b>
  • <i>
  • </i>

Input

<div class="foo">x</div>

Matches

  • <div class="foo">
  • </div>

Input

no tags

No match

—

Common use cases

  • •Pulling HTML/XML tags out of a stream
  • •Stripping markup with String.replace
  • •Demonstrating greedy-vs-lazy in tutorials
  • •Quick parsers (use a real parser for prod)
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