I’ve simplified your input string to qABxBCzABxBCDEFw, where
A represents [
B represents -
C represents ]
D represents {\+
E represents the text between the +s (including the URL)
F represents \+}
Lower case letters represent everything else.
So here are some substitute commands run against the input:
Command Output
0. Input text: qABxBCzABxBCDEFw
1. Non-greedy: 's|AB.*?BCD(E)F|\1|' qEw
2. Greedy: 's|AB.*BCD(E)F|\1|' qEw
3. Restricted Non-greedy: 's|AB[^B]*?BCD(E)F|\1|' qABxBCzEw
4. Restricted Greedy: 's|AB[^B]*BCD(E)F|\1|' qABxBCzEw
5. Constrained Non-greedy: 's|(.*)AB.*?BCD(E)F|\1\2|' qABxBCzEw
6. Constrained Greedy: 's|(.*)AB.*BCD(E)F|\1\2|' qABxBCzEw
Command 1 is the one you tried.
Command 2 is the same thing, but not non-greedy.
As you’re aware, they produce the same result.
It seems to me that non-greedy applies only to the length of the text matched
by something like .*. It doesn’t affect the starting point.
Regex matches always begin as soon as they can.
So, when you say AB.*?BC (i.e., \[-.*?-\]),
it’s matching the first [- on the line.
Then, you expect, it’s matching the shortest possible string
of any characters ending with -].
You might expect that this would be [-(-].
But look closer: the regex is AB.*?BCD(E)F,
so it must match the shortest possible string
of any characters ending with -] {+.
This forces it to consume everything up almost to the URL.
I have written four alternative commands that seem to do what you want.
The “Restricted” ones (3 and 4) search, not for AB.*BC,
but for AB[^B]*BC; in words, AB…BC with no Bs in the “…”.
In your case, that means [-…-] with no -s in the “…”.
The “Constrained” ones (5 and 6) force the AB.*BC match to start
as late as possible by putting a greedy .* in front of them.
It turns out not to matter whether you do the AB.*BC part
as greedy or non-greedy in these, either.
