Shortest match in Regex [duplicate] - ruby

Question

This question already has answers here:
Find shortest matches between two strings
(4 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
This is my regex:
/<strong>.*ingredients.*<\/ul>/im
Assuming the source code:
<strong>Contest closes on Thursday May 10th 2012 at 9pm PST</strong></div>
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* I am not affiliated with Blue Marble Brands or Ines Rosales Tortas in any way. I am not sponsored by them and did not receive any compensation to write this post...I just simply think the Tortas are wonderful!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" height="480" mea="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-35J5vNrXkqE/T6htXTafrmI/AAAAAAAAA5E/g2mtiuSpSmw/s640/food+003.JPG" width="640" /></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Ingredients:</span></strong><br />
<ul>
<li>Ines Rosales Rosemary and Thyme Tortas</li>
<li>Pizza Sauce (ready made in a jar)</li>
<li>Roma Tomatoes</li>
<li>Roasted Red Peppers </li>
<li>Marinated Artichoke Hearts</li>
<li>Olives (I used Pitted Spanish Manzanilla Olives)</li>
<li>Daiya Vegan Mozzarella Cheese</li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Directions:</strong></span><br />
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Spread small amount of pizza sauce over Torta.
the Regex is greedy and grabs everything from <strong>Contest...</ul> but the shortest match should yield <strong><span style="font-size: large;">Ingredients...</ul>
this is my gist: https://gist.github.com/3660370
::EDIT::
Please allow flexibility inbetween strong tag and ingredients, and ingredients and ul.

Answer 1

Try this:
/<strong><span.*ingredients.*<\/ul>/im
Please refrain from regex-ing html. Use Nokogiri or a similar library instead.

Answer 2

This should work:
/(?!<strong>.*<strong>.*<\/ul>)<strong>.*?ingredients.*?<\/ul>/im
Test it here
Basically, the regex is using the negative lookahead to avoid multiple <strong> before <\ul> like this: (?!<strong>.*<strong>.*<\/ul>)

Answer 3

I think this is what you're looking for:
/<strong>(?:(?!<strong>).)*ingredients.*?<\/ul>/im
Replacing the first .* with (?:(?!<strong>).)* allows it to match anything except another <strong> tag before it finds ingredients. After that, the non-greedy .*? causes it to stop matching at the first instance of </ul> it sees. (Your sample only contains the one <UL> element, but I'm assuming the real data could have more.)
The usual warnings apply: there are many ways this regex can be fooled even in perfectly valid HTML, to say nothing of the dreck we usually see out there.