正则表达式匹配标签内的标签和最后匹配的标签

Question

I am trying to parse some xml tags with data containing Escaped strings Some samples

other tags with our without newlines
<tag name="abc1" type="bcd" value="test"><tag name="abc2" type="bcd" value="test">  
other tags other tags with our without newlines
<tag name="abc2" type="bcd" value="<w:test xmlns:wst=&quot;http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust&quot;><a xmlns:&quot;a:b:c:ddd:&quot;>XEduAjr8MoV</a></w:test>">

basically I need to find values in tags within other strings. Something like this

<tag name="wwww" type="wwww" value="SOME HTML ESCAPED STRING WITH NEWLINES">

Here is what I have

<tag name="(?<name>\w*)" type="(?<id>\w*)" value="(?<value>.*)">

I am using this c# code

var regex = new Regex(regstr, RegexOptions.Multiline);
MatchCollection mc = regex.Matches(sourcestring);

I am running into problems with multiple matches combined because of (?<value>.*) for if both are same line <tag name="abc1" type="bcd" value="test"><tag name="abc2" type="bcd" value="test"> Any way to get around this? Is there any better way?

Answer 1

Its not advisable to parse xml files with regex patterns. A reason for this is because xml involves/requires deep nesting.

Answer 2

It's well known that you should not use regex to parse xhtml, unless you don't have complex tags and a weird set of characters.

However, if you want to use regex, for your specific example, you have to use non greedy (or lazy) quantifiers:

<tag name="(?<name>\w*?)" type="(?<id>\w*?)" value="(?<value>.*?)">
                                                       HERE ---^
also I put it here ---^------------------^ 
since it is more secure, but it is not needed

Working demo