Non-greedy regular expression does not work?

[swayf]

First, thank you for the nice software

I am trying to use custom grammer with next RE:

^((?:.*?{5})

which sould match first 5 fields in ';'-separated values file.
But it, seems, does not work...

I have two sorted files to compare. Let say first 5 fields (columns) should be used like 'key' for alignment.. How can I achieve this?

Thank you

[Aaron]

Hello,

Unfortunately, nongreedy (? RegEx is not supported by our grammar engine. You would need to define the section more literally (^[^;]+;[^;]+;[^;]+;[^;]+;[^;]+

Is your text entirely semi-colon delimited? Does it have a Key column? If so, I would recommend trying out the Data Compare session type. You can define the ; characters as the delimiter, and the Data Compare will then place your text into columns and align by the Key column (default: Column 1). You must have at least 1 key column, and the key column must match exactly. You can define multiple key columns (such as First Name and Last Name) to create a unique identifier. If you need to "move" the key column from column 1, define another column as the Key column first, then remove it.