A reluctant quantifier indicates the search engine to start with the shortest possible piece of the string. Once match found, the engine continue; otherwise it adds one character to the section of the string being checked and search that, and so on. This process follows until it finds a match or the entire string has been used up. Following are various examples of Reluctant Quantifiers using regular expression in java.
| Sr.No | Construct & Matches |
|---|---|
| 1 | X??X, once or not at all. |
| 2 | X*?X, zero or more times |
| 3 | X+?X, one or more times. |
| 4 | X{n}?X, exactly n times. |
| 5 | X{n,}?X, at least n times. |
| 6 | X{n,m}?X, at least n but not more than m times |
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