Mather groups order

[jammybell]

Documentation says:

Capturing groups are numbered by counting their opening parentheses from left to right.

but in the code below

final String regex = ".*(::.*::).*";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
String query = "::words.txt:: asdf\"::11.txt::\"";
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(query);
String result = matcher.group(1);

result variable contains "::11.txt::" (second group), not "::words.txt::" i expect.

What do I wrong?
How to capture first inclusion?

[JosAH]

Try the 'reluctant' quantifier, i.e. make your regular expression ".*?(::.*?::).*". (read the API documentation for the Pattern class for details).

kind regards,

Jos