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**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 24, 2006, 3:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regex-in-html/94171 "2006-04-24T03:09:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@Hampton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Hampton)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 3:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regex-in-html/94171/1 "2006-04-24T03:09:01Z")
So, I’m trying to write a nice bit of regex to handle finding anchor
tags in
a bit of html.
This is what I’ve got…
/\<[aA][^\>]_\>[^\<]_\/
I’m planning on using this with a gsub!.
Here is what it has to do…
[Anything in here.](http://stuff.com)
As you can see, the regex I have will indeed work for this instance. It
will
match with ‘[Anything in
here.](http://stuff.com)’
Except, here is where it fails…
[**Anything** in here.](http://stuff.com)
I still need ‘[**Anything** in here.](http://stuff.com)’
This regex doesn’t work…
/\<[aA][^\>]_\>._\/
Because my middle tag will just keep going and return
[ **Anything** in
here.](http://stuff.com)
because it doesn’t have any reason to stop.
Any suggestions?
-hampton.
---
**Author:**  [@Hampton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Hampton)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regex-in-html/94171/2 "2006-04-24T03:30:23Z")
replace .\* with [^(\
**Author:**  [@Hampton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Hampton)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 3:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regex-in-html/94171/3 "2006-04-24T03:36:29Z")
You could use the ? non-greedy modifier for this:
/\/
This will match from the beginning of the \ I still need '\
**Author:**  [@Hampton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Hampton)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 4:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regex-in-html/94171/4 "2006-04-24T04:03:42Z")
WOooooowhoooo!!!
Thanks!