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What does, .*? mean?

 

http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Web/regex.php

This is what I am using as a reference.

. Matches any character. cat. matches catT and cat2 but not catty

? Preceeding item must match one or zero times. colou?r matches color or colour but not colouur

* Preceeding item must match zero or more times.

 

This is what does not make sense. I have been using .*? to match anything.  And it works fine.  So why not just . to do th ematching.  I do not

understand this.  Why the *?  I basically got this basic pattern offline and have been reusing and modifying it as I learn new patterns and what they all mean.

 

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

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