Regex reverse lookbehind

Question

I am having some issues in understanding how to use lookbehind in regex. I need to match all between the first preceding occurrence of myMethod and somethingelse

Example https://regex101.com/r/lF8yT0/4

public myMethod
do something

private myMethod
do somethingelse


(?s)(?<=(myMethod){1})(.*)somethingelse

Selects all from the top, while I only expect

private myMethod
do somethingelse

Why would you expect `foo bar` as the match for your regex. Can you clarify your logic? The Regex101 example you gave seems to show something different. — Tim Biegeleisen, Jul 08 '16 at 15:21

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

0

You may use a tempered greedy token:

[^\r\n]*myMethod((?:(?!myMethod).)*?)somethingelse
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

See the regex demo

The first [^\r\n]* matches 0+ chars other than CR/LF (since you expect the start of the line in your match result) and (?:(?!myMethod).)*? matches any 0 chars (as few as possible) that do not start a myMethod substring.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

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answered Feb 04 '17 at 23:12

Wiktor Stribiżew

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Regex reverse lookbehind

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