How can I fix my regex to not match too much with a greedy quantifier? [duplicate]

Answer 1

You could make * non-greedy by appending a question mark:

$line =~ /(\d+:\d+)\ssay;(.*?);(.*?);(.*?);(.*)/

or you can match everything except a semicolon in each part except the last:

$line =~ /(\d+:\d+)\ssay;([^;]*);([^;]*);([^;]*);(.*)/