Expressions and pattern matchers

Question

I want to parse some string using reg expressions, but I want to specify a start string -- any characters -- end string. I want it to stop the first time it finds the end string not the last time it finds it.
Here is my code
public static void main(String[] args) {
String text = " a this is the first group b a this is the second group b xxxxxxx b";
String oldHeader2 = "a.*b"; // I want the search to stop after the first b
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(oldHeader2 );
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println("----");
// Get the matching string
String match = matcher.group();
System.out.println(match);
My output is this
a this is the first group b a this is the second group b xxxxxxx b
I need to get this out like this
a this is the first group b
a this is the second group b

Answer 1

cjgoode wrote:
I want to parse some string using reg expressions, but I want to specify a start string -- any characters -- end string. I want it to stop the first time it finds the end string not the last time it finds it.
public static void main(String[] args) {
String text = " a this is the first group b a this is the second group b xxxxxxx b";
String oldHeader2 = "a.*b";  // I want the search to stop after the first b
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(oldHeader2 );
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println("----");
// Get the matching string
String match = matcher.group();
System.out.println(match);
You are using a greedy quantifier but you want a reluctant quantifier.
  http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html#sum