The short answer is that (it is well known that) regexen are not currently the best tool to parse *ML text. (No, I'm not talking about SML, OCAML et similia!)

However non greedy pattern matching is described at perldoc perlre.

In reply to Re: How to avoid the greedy matching failures?. by blazar
in thread How to avoid the greedy matching failures?. by perlsen

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