How can I match a quote-delimited string with a regex?

Question

If I\'m trying to match a quote-delimited string with a regex, which of the following is \"better\" (where \"better\" means both more efficient and less likely to do somethi

Answer 1

From a performance perspective (extremely heavy, long-running loop over long strings), I could imagine that

"[^"]*"

is faster than

".*?"

because the latter would do an additional check for each step: peeking at the next character. The former would be able to mindlessly roll over the string.

As I said, in real-world scenarios this would hardly be noticeable. Therefore I would go with number two (if my current regex flavor supports it, that is) because it is much more readable. Otherwise with number one, of course.