I'm trying to extract a record from inside a multi-line scalar using a single regex, for example:
#! /usr/local/bin/perl my $source = " name: Schwank E. Schwagg address: 123 Dirtweed Dr. user: 1 name: Bizzi Buddi address: 321 Grapevine Way user: 2 name: Fernal Brimstone address: 666 Lucifer Ln user: 3 "; $source =~ m/.*?(name.*?user: 2)/s; print "$1\n";
I'd like this example to extract the name/address record for user #2, Bizzi Buddi, so I attempt to grab everything from "name" to "user: 2". Unfortunately, this regex is not minimally greedy, despite the .*?, and ends up matching the preceeding record also, which contains "name". How can I create a regex that minimally matches /literal_1.*literal_2/ and guarantees that the first literal is not repeated within the wildcard?

In reply to minimal greed, revisited by gregor-e

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