vb.net regex finding blocks of text between <@ and @> [duplicate]

This question already has answers here: Get text between two strings Regex VB.Net (5 answers) Closed 3 years ago.

vb.net regex

I have some strings like this to analyze:

<%JohnSmith$>@ some other text @<%FredJonese%>@ (@<%SallyHarris%>@)@

I need to find occurrences of each block of text that's between <% and %> and also those between each pair of @ symbols.

So for the above example, I want to retrieve the following 6 pieces of text (there is a leading space in the 2nd and 4th lines below):

JohnSmith

some other text

FredJones

(

SallyHarris

)

When I use a patter like "<%\w%> it retrieves the entire line because the line starts and ends with &开发者_Go百科lt;% and %>

I'm lost on the best way to do this. I need to get the chunks out in the order in which they occur.

Nothing I've tried so far is working. I know I could write a loop that goes through the string character by character but it seems like regex can handle this. Can anyone help out on this?

Thanks.

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You need to add the lazy operator after a star or a plus (lazy star or lazy plus). If you don't, the matching is greedy (the default) so it tries to match as much as possible.

<%\w*?%>

Notice the question mark. This will match all three.