Regular Expression Help in .NET

Answer 1

Just change the expression to non-greedy and reverse the match order:

Dim reg As New Regex("\s\(.+?\)</P>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase Or RegexOptions.RightToLeft)

Or make it match only one closing parenthesis:

"\s\([^)]+\)</P>"

Or make it match only numbers inside your pharentesis:

"\s\(\d+\)</P>"

Edit: in order to make the non-greedy sample to work, you'll need to set the RightToLeft flag on the Regex object

Answer 2

Dim reg As New Regex("\s\(\d+\)</P>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

Your stumbling block was the insufficient specificity of the . (it matches all characters, including parentheses) and the greediness of the + (it matches as much as possible).

Just be more specific (\d+) or less greedy (.+?).

Answer 3

You need to use a Look Ahead (?= ) to anchor the pattern. That gives a hint to the parser of where the data should stop, be anchored to. Here is an example which gets the previous ( ) data from the p tag anchor point:

(?:\()([^)]+)(?:\))(?=</[pP]>)


(?:\()        - Match but don't capture a (
([^)]+)       - Get all the data until a ) is hit. [^ ] is the not set
(?:\))        - Match but don't capture the )  
(?=</[pP]>)  - Look Ahead Match but don't capture a suffix of </p or P >

HTH