Examples of Reluctant Quantifiers


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A reluctant quantifier indicates the search engine to start with the shortest possible piece of the string. Once match found, the engine continue; otherwise it adds one character to the section of the string being checked and search that, and so on. This process follows until it finds a match or the entire string has been used up. Following are various examples of Reluctant Quantifiers using regular expression in java.

Sr.No Construct & Matches
1 X??

X, once or not at all.

2 X*?

X, zero or more times

3 X+?

X, one or more times.

4 X{n}?

X, exactly n times.

5 X{n,}?

X, at least n times.

6 X{n,m}?

X, at least n but not more than m times

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