How do I find the shortest overlapping match using regular expressions?

Question

I\'m still relatively new to regex. I\'m trying to find the shortest string of text that matches a particular pattern, but am having trouble if the shortest pattern is a sub

Answer 1

No. Perl returns the longest, leftmost match, while obeying your non-greedy quantifiers. You'll have to loop, I'm afraid.

Edit: Yes, I realize I said Perl above, but I believe it is true for Python.