Bonjour! (feeling international today)

I've got a regEx which is working fine, but it seems, somehow, inelegant. I've been pouring through documentation to find a better way to write this, but I haven't come up with anything yet.

While I've wrapped my mind around the basics, I'm always striving to get better, so I thought I'd ask: is there a better way to do this?

Here is the (single line) I'm matching against: 

[Tue Apr 20 04:51:19 2004] [error] [client 68.103.45.137] File does no
+t exist: /home/virtual/site6/fst/var/www/html/robots.txt

[download]

And here is my regEx: 

\[client[\w\s.]{12,16}\](.*?$)

[download]

$1 captures everything which is the actual error, in this examples case "File does not exist .... " to the end.

I had thought there must be a way to say "match the very last ] you find, til the end of the line, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Just seems wasteful to me to have to match all that client 102.102.102.102 stuff to grab the part I actually want.

So, anyone care to enlighten me on the more elegant solution? Eagerly awaiting your Monkish reponses ...

theAcolyte

In reply to Is there a better way to write this RegEx? by theAcolyte

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