Coding Forum

**Zoram** · 10-11-2007, 02:14 PM

I am trying to use a regular expression to find only the first element in set. For example:

Code:

<document>
   <element>
      ...Stuff...
   </element>
   <element>
      ...Stuff..
   </element>
</document>

Right now I am trying this regex:

Code:

<element([^>]*)>(.*)</element>

which gives me basically:

Code:

   <element>
      ...Stuff...
   </element>
   <element>
      ...Stuff..
   </element>

I'm trying to make it just return the first element like:

Code:

   <element>
      ...Stuff...
   </element>

For some reason I can't seem to write the regex right to have it stop when it reaches the first </element>

Any suggestions?

**Zoram** · 10-11-2007, 05:06 PM

k, i was able to get it to work by using:

Code:

<element([^>]*)>(((?!</element>).)+)</element>