Non Greedy Regular Expression in Scripting Engine 5.1

[Wole]

Hi. I really need help with a regular expression in ASP. I need a regex
pattern that will grab a select or textarea tag in an HTML file. If I run
the pattern I should get

<select name="whatever">
<option value="a" selected>A</option>
<option value="b">B</option>
<option value="c">C</option>
</select>

Or

<textarea name="whatever">Here is some text area text</textarea>

I know the following pattern works:

<(select|textarea).*(.|\n)*?</(select|textarea)>

But the problem is my web hosting company is using ASP scripting engine 5.1
which does not support the non greedy delimiter (?). I doubt they are going
to upgrade to 5.5 anytime soon. I'll appreciate it if anyone can give me a
pattern that does the same job but does not use the ? delimiter. Is there a
way I can tweak the pattern above so that it works in ASP scripting engine
5.1? Thanks in advance.

[Peter Foti]

"Wole" <an********@annonymous.com> wrote in message
news:ef***************************@msgid.meganewss ervers.com...

But the problem is my web hosting company is using ASP scripting engine 5.1 which does not support the non greedy delimiter (?). I doubt they are going to upgrade to 5.5 anytime soon.

I don't have an answer to your question, but have tried asking your hosting
company if they would upgrade? I may be wrong, but I think all that's
required is for them to upgrade to IE 5.5 (or better yet, 6) on the server.
I had a similar problem a few months back, and the host didn't mind
upgrading. It fixed my problem... you might try asking. :)

Regards,
Peter Foti

[Evertjan.]

Wole wrote on 25 feb 2004 in microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

Hi. I really need help with a regular expression in ASP. I need a
regex pattern that will grab a select or textarea tag in an HTML file.
If I run the pattern I should get

<select name="whatever">
<option value="a" selected>A</option>
<option value="b">B</option>
<option value="c">C</option>
</select>

Or

<textarea name="whatever">Here is some text area text</textarea>

I know the following pattern works:

<(select|textarea).*(.|\n)*?</(select|textarea)>

But the problem is my web hosting company is using ASP scripting
engine 5.1 which does not support the non greedy delimiter (?). I
doubt they are going to upgrade to 5.5 anytime soon. I'll appreciate
it if anyone can give me a pattern that does the same job but does not
use the ? delimiter. Is there a way I can tweak the pattern above so
that it works in ASP scripting engine 5.1? Thanks in advance.

my unintested idea would be:

1 test if the file iss without the "~" character

2 replace all "</select>" with "~"

3 use string <select>[^~]*~

4 replace the "~" in the resulting string with "</select>"

Use a seperate and similar code for <textarea>

--
Evertjan.
The Netherlands.
(Please change the x'es to dots in my emailaddress)