Nooo see Death to Dot Star for a full discussion. This is a greedy match. The dot star will match as much as possible and is dangerous. At very least use a ? to cause a lazy match. When you say everything do you mean everything or do you mean only letters then try  [A-Za-z]{4} or  \w{4} (The {4} matches 4 times only) Try to make your regexp as specific as possible.
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Zigster