Tier 4 · Enchantercapture

The First Tag Only

Capture the text inside the FIRST ... tag on the line — just the text, not the tags.

A quantifier is greedy by default: .* takes everything it can and only gives characters back until the rest of the pattern fits. With two tags on the line, that means it runs to the LAST , swallowing the closing tag, the text between, and the second opening tag along the way. Adding ? after the quantifier makes it lazy — it takes as little as possible and only grows when it has to, so it stops at the first . This is the single most common regex mistake in the wild.

quantifiers lazy groups

Your pattern0 chars · par 12

Flags

Start typing — tests run as you go.

Test cases

one and two→ ["one"]
hello→ ["hello"]
a x b y c→ ["x"]
nothing heremust not match

+ 4 hidden tests, checked when you submit. They are what stops a pattern that only fits the examples above.