Regex to first occurrence only?

Question

Let's say I have the following string:

this is a test for the sake of testing. this is only a test. The end.

and I want to select this is a test and this is only a test. What in the world do I need to do?

The following Regex I tried yields a goofy result:

this(.*)test (I also wanted to capture what was between it)

returns this is a test for the sake of testing. this is only a test

It seems like this is probably something easy I'm forgetting.

Answer 1

The regex is greedy meaning it will capture as many characters as it can which fall into the .* match. To make it non-greedy try:

this(.*?)test

The ? modifier will make it capture as few characters as possible in the match.