Notepad ++正则表达式问题

Question

I'm attempting to take some of the work out of pasting in insert statements and formatting them for mysqli prepared statements.

Here's an example:

INSERT INTO 
products
(hash, name, description, large_img, small_img, label_img, category, small, large, small_price, large_price, best_seller, in_stock) 
VALUES 
([value-1],[value-2],[value-3],[value-4],[value-5],[value-6],[value-7],[value-8],[value-9],[value-10],[value-11],[value-12],[value-13])

So i tried a regex:

find: (\[.*)(])


replace: ?

but instead of replacing each [value=*] , it replaces all of them only stopping at the last instance of a closing bracket. why?

output:

INSERT INTO 
products
(id, hash, name, description, large_img, small_img, label_img, category, small, large, small_price, large_price, best_seller, in_stock) 
VALUES 
(?)

How can i get it to replace it right. Shouldn't my regex select everything until the first closing bracket, but why does it select everything until the last closing bracket?

Answer 1

* is a greedy operator meaning it will match as much as it can and still allow the remainder of the regular expression to match. Use *? for a non-greedy match meaning "zero or more — preferably as few as possible".

(\[.*?)(])

Note : There is really no need to use capturing groups since you're not referencing them in your replacement call.

Find: \[.*?\]
Replace: ?

Answer 2

不要忘记*是贪婪的，它会尝试尽可能匹配，请使用非贪婪版本：

(\[.*?)(])

Answer 3

As others have said, * is greedy, while *? is non-greedy and will only pick up the minimum amount to match (which is what you're trying to do.)

---

However, instead of putting together a string of question marks and commas for PHP why not be lazy and let PHP generate them itself: implode(',', array_fill(0, 13, '?')) .

Feed however many you need in place of that 13 and you've got a reliable set of placeholders less subject to cross-eyed typos.

Example:

$placeholders = implode(',', array_fill(0, 13, '?'));

$sql = <<<SQL
INSERT INTO
products
(id, hash, name, description, large_img, small_img, label_img, category, small, large, small_price, large_price, best_seller, in_stock)
VALUES
($placeholders)
SQL;

---

echo $sql :

INSERT INTO
products
(id, hash, name, description, large_img, small_img, label_img, category, small, large, small_price, large_price, best_seller, in_stock)
VALUES
(?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?)