为什么这个正则表达式与结束>匹配

Question

For this regex:

/<(\/?)(\w+)([^>]*?)>/

on this string:

<div class='test'><b>Hello</b> <i>world!</i></div>

the match returned is:

<div class='test'>

I am confused at the ([^>]*?) capture. Doesn't ^> means that it is the inverse of > ?

Answer 1

Here's the breakdown of that regex:

<(\\/?) matches the opening < , possibly followed by /

(\\w+) matches many word chars (it's in parens so the capture group will contain the HTML element by itself)

([^>]*?)> matches multiple characters (lazily) that are not > , followed by a >

So in your example, it's correct that it matches <div class='test'>