Ok, is there a nice detailed description of the engine that would fill in what causes a second run and what the "?" does exactly?

This behavior isn't very intuitive.

Also, is there another way to get the desired result other than the ugly hack I posted below?

In reply to Re^3: Non-greedy regex behaves greedily by kovacsbv
in thread Non-greedy regex behaves greedily by fourmi

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