note
chromatic
<em>Why doesn't the engine continue backwards past the whitespace and look for a <\/tag> string?</em>
<p>
Because the engine prefers the longest match that starts at the leftmost possible position. When it hits .*, it jumps all the way to the end of the string and then backtracks, trying to match the next necessary character. Because it's backtracking, it matches </tag> at the end of the string. That fits the pattern, so it doesn't continue backtracking to find a shorter match.
<p>
<em>If, when creating the example string, I carraige return after the <\/tag>, there shouldn't be a whitespace to match on, right?</em>
<p>
The /s flag allows the '.' token to match newlines. Adding the minimal token '?' avoids the jump-to-end-then-backtrack behavior. It works like you'd expect, trying to match as few characters as possible.
<p>
Does that clear it up? I've also touched up the formatting somewhat.
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