(Perl) match the shortest possible string

http://www.perlhowto.com/match_the_shortest_possible_string

 

The pattern matching quantifiers of a Perl regular expression are "greedy" (they match the longest possible string). To force the match to be "ungreedy", append a ? to the pattern quantifier (*, +).

Example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

$string="111s11111s";

#-- greedy match
$string =~ /^(.*)s/;
print "$1\n"; # prints 111s11111

#-- ungreedy match
$string =~ /^(.*?)s/;
print "$1\n"; # prints 111