正则表达式删除两个字符串之间的所有内容，但重复

Question

Example string: Before text, <ref>{{BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH}}</ref> after text, <ref>{{reference2}}</ref> end of paragraph.

I'm looking to remove any mention of <ref> and </ref> and everything in between.

The result that I want from above example string: Before text, after text, end of paragraph.

I have read regex remove everything between 2 strings and have tried replaceAll("<ref>.*</ref>", "") , the problem I'm having is that the method in that thread is removing too much. If I use this method on the above text the result will be : Before text, end of paragraph . It will cut out the text in-between the sets of <ref> tags.

Is there an easy regex way to achieve the desired result? In my actual text there might be many (more than 2) sets of <ref> </ref> tags with useful text in-between.

Edit: added the regex I tried.

Answer 1

I assume you tried it with replaceAll("<ref>.*</ref>", ""); . Try it with a questionmark, it makes the star non greedy. replaceAll("<ref>.*?</ref>", "");

Answer 2

If you're going off the answer in the referenced question you're indeed "removing too much" because the answer uses a greedy operator, use *? for a non-greedy match instead ...

I would propose the following regular expression if you must use one at all:

str = str.replaceAll("(?s)<ref>.*?</ref>", "");

Note: The inline (?s) mode modifier allows the dot to match across newline sequences.