# Java: Regex Examples

Regex | Matches
--- | ---
Finding the domain name in HTML links.
`<a +href="http://([\w\.-]+)` | OK. The domain name in an HTML link. Ie, an "<", one or more blanks, href=, then one or more word characters or dots. Group 1 matches the domain name. This only matches lowercase; to match regardless of case, the Pattern object should be created with the second parameter specifying case insensitivity.
`<a +href="http://(.+)["/?:]` | BAD. This pattern would appear to work, stopping when a character after the domain name is found. However, "+" is a greedy qualifier, it will match all characters to the end of the string, then backup until it finds one of the terminating characters, ""/?:", which almost surely won't be in the same link.
`<a +href="http://(.+?)["/?:]` | OK. Fixes the above pattern by using the lazy quantifier `+?` .