Why does regex 1, with the error, produce the desired output, while regex 2 fails to capture the terminal "g" in the desired link-text and regex3 fails almost entirely?

1. / > ( (?: \s | \w )+ ) (?! <\td> ) /mx

   This works because the error is irrelevant, and redundant, to what is captured.

   Without it, the resultant regex / > ( (?: \s | \w )+ ) /mx still works exactly the same.

   The only place in the string where '>' is immediately followed by a space (\s) or word (\w) character, starts at '>Moving'.

   And the string of 1 or more space or word characters ends with the first '<'.

2. / > ( (?: \s| \w ) + ) (?! <\/td> ) /mx says that the last captured character in the string must not be followed by </td>.

   So the regex omits the 'g' which is followed by that string.

3. / > (?: ( \s | \w ) + ) (?! <\/td> ) /mx only captures a single character because that's what it asks for.

   ( \s | \w ) says 'capture either a single space, or a single word character', so it does.

   The presence of the quantifier '+' outside the capturing parens does not change that.