Regex prevent selecting characters from previous match

Question

My title probably doesn't explain exactly what I mean. Take the following string:

POWERSTART9^{{2|3}}POWERENDx{{3^EXSTARTxEXEND}}=POWERSTART27^{{1|4}}POWEREND

What I want to do here is isolate the parts that are like this:

{{2|3}} or {{1|4}}

The following expression works to an extent, it selects the first one {{2|3}} with no issue:

\{\{(.*?)\|(.*?)\}\}

The problem is, it's not just selecting the first if {{2|3}} and the second of {{1|4}} because after the first one we have {{3^EXSTARTxEXEND}} so it's taking the starting point from {{3 and going right until the end of the second part I want |4}}

Here it is highlighted on RegExr:

I've never been great with regex and can't work out how to stop it doing that. Any ideas? I basically want it to only match the exact pattern and not something that contains it.

Answer 1

You may use

\{\{((?:(?!{{).)*?)\|(.*?)}}

See the regex demo .

If there can be no { and } inside the {{...}} substrings, you may use a simpler \\{\\{([^{}|]*)\\|([^{}]*)}} expression (see demo ).

Details

• \\{\\{ - a {{ substring
• ((?:(?!{{).)*?) - Capturing group 1: any char ( . ), as few as possible ( *? ), that does not start a {{ char sequence ( tempered greedy token )
  • [^{}|]* - any 0 or more chars other than { , } and |
• \\| - a | char
• (.*?) - Capturing group 2: any 0 or more chars, as few as possible
  • [^{}]* - any 0 or more chars other than { and }
• }} - a }} substring.

Answer 2

Try this \\{\\{([^\\^|]*)\\|([^\\^|]*)\\}\\}

https://regex101.com/r/bLF8Oq/1