How do you match something surrounded by 'foo' and 'bar' without matching foo and bar?

Question

as opposed to regex:'foo.+bar'

Answer 1

Use a group:

foo(.+?)bar

Then you will be able to refer to the group as $1 or \1, depending on the language and what you are doing with it.

As always, let me recommend Regular-Expressions.info for learning all about regexes.

Answer 2

Just use:

/foo(.+)bar/

Answer 3

You can use:

foo(.+?)bar

or

foo(.*?)bar

The 2nd one will work even when there is nothing between foo and bar

Answer 4

An alternative would be to use lookaround if the regex flavor you're using (which you didn't specify) supports it. .NET, Python do, Ruby and JavaScript don't (fully), for example:

(?<=foo).+(?=bar)

matches any number of characters if they are preceded by foo and followed by bar.