regular expression problem

Question

i'm test a regular expression,i curious about the match result,

the symbol * is greendy,in my option,the result shuld only match 1 result, like belows:

<script language=javascript>
ati('#', '../../../UpLoadFile/Product/20101010162153846.jpg', '加厚青色围脖');
}
</script>
<script language=javascript>
ati

but the result is not what i expect,any one could help me explain it,thank you?

Answer 1

* is greedy, but it's only matching \s, which means whitespace characters. If you want to match everything up to the last appearance of ati, use .* instead.

If this environment doesn't match newlines with ., maybe you can include them by matching on (.|\n)*

Answer 2

It can not match what you want because you are only matching the start of it.

Greedy gets you when you look for something arbitrary between 2 markers, and you get everything between the first and last, i.e.

/<p>.*<\/p>/

Usually, when you do that, you want all p elements. But without the ungreedy .*? or the U flag, you will get everything between the first and last instance.