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C# Regular Expression Help

Hi

I am having trouble with a regular expression.

The expression is:
<description>.*?</description>

The content I am running the expression on is:
<description>hello</description>

that works fine, but if I put a line break in the middle of my content it does not work. eg:

<description>he
llo</description>

It does not produce any matches on the above content. How can I get my expression to work even with line breaks in the content.

Thanks

SOLUTION

ddrudik

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

bgs264

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bgs264

I'm also puzzled by your use of the asterisk followed by the question mark -

the question mark makes input optional (actually, it allows zero or one of the preceeding character set).

The asterisk means "zero, one or more repetitions".
(You may like to see: http://www.regular-expressions.info/repeat.html)

In this case, I think the question mark is unnecessary, and possibly confusing the regex parser. Did you have a reason for it particularly?

Regards,
bgs264

ozo

If the regular expression engine support it
*? means match as few as possible
* means match as much as possible
so if you have
<description>xxx </description> <description>yyy</description>
* would match
<description>xxx </description> <description>yyy</description>
and *? would match
<description>xxx </description>

zattz

ASKER

No I didnt. I dont really know what im doing!

Thanks for the help :)

bgs264

It's impressive that you're using regular expressions if you're new to them, they can be very powerful for string validation.

Have a look around regular-expressions.info for some support, it is a very good site.

Good luck and happy programming

bgs264

zattz

ASKER

thanks for the tip