greediness in sed

Question

I want

ereg ($rat, $dog, $cat)

to become

preg_match (\'#\'.$rat.\'#\', $dog, $cat)

To achieve this, I did

Answer 1

Note: This also works if you have multiple instances of ereg ($rat, $dog, $cat) on the same line whereas other answers do not:

$ echo 'ereg ($rat, $dog, $cat)' | sed "s/ereg\([^(]*\)(\([^,]*\),\([^)]*)\)/preg_match\1('#'.\2.'#',\3/g"
preg_match ('#'.$rat.'#', $dog, $cat)

Example

$ echo 'ereg ($rat, $dog, $cat) ereg ($rat, $dog, $cat)' | sed "s/ereg\([^(]*\)(\([^,]*\),\([^)]*)\)/preg_match\1('#'.\2.'#',\3/g"
preg_match ('#'.$rat.'#', $dog, $cat) preg_match ('#'.$rat.'#', $dog, $cat)