how to get around greedy * operator?

[John Livermore]

What regular expression would return only...
id="Table3"

from the string...
height="100%" id="Table3" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"

I tried...
id=".*"

but I get a match to the end of the line.

I also tried...
id=".*?"

but that didn't find anything.

Thanks for the help,
John

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

Re: how to get around greedy * operator?

John Livermore <john.livermore @nospm-inginix.com> writes:
[color=blue]
> What regular expression would return only...
> id="Table3"
>
> from the string...
> height="100%" id="Table3" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"[/color]

The simplest (generalizable) regular expression would be
/id="[^"]*"/

[color=blue]
> I also tried...
> id=".*?"
>
> but that didn't find anything.[/color]

Suprising, depending on what browser you tested in. It should work
in a browser understanding ECMAScript v3 Regular Expressions.
It works for me in Opera 7 and IE 6.

/L
--
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen - lrn@hotpop.com
DHTML Death Colors: <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/rasterTriangleD OM.html>
'Faith without judgement merely degrades the spirit divine.'