regular expression in notepad++

Question

I am unable to search for the following text in notepad++, I am trying to use regular expression.

Insert into SOMETABLE (COULMN1,COULMN2,COULMN3,COULMN4,COULMN5,COULMN6) values ('ANYTHING','ANYTHING',to_date('30-APR-13 18:51:41','DD-MON-RR HH24:MI:SS'),'ANYTHING',to_date('30-APR-13 18:51:41','DD-MON-RR HH24:MI:SS'),'ANYTHING');

I am trying to search to_date('30-APR-13 18:51:41','DD-MON-RR HH24:MI:SS') from the above line.

Answer 1

If you want to match everything from to_date( up to the closest ) , search for

to_date\([^)]*\)

(using the Perl regex option).

Explanation: [^)]* matches any number of characters except ) .