On Feb 4, 5:17 pm, MRAB <goo... at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote: > You could use the lazy form "*?" which tries to match as little as > possible, eg "\(\?P<first>.*?\)" where the ".*?" matches: > spam:(?P<first>.*) ham:(?P<second>.*) > giving "spam:foo ham:(?P<second>.*)". A-ha! Of course! That makes perfect sense! Thank you! Problem solved! Ciao! Manu