How to replace the first matching for each line with regular expression

Question

Saying that I have such a file as below:

<random_string>hello<random_string>
random_string<random_string>hello<random_string>

I want to remove the first square bracket and its content so that the file becomes:

hello<random_string>
random_stringhello<random_string>

How could I achieve this?

I've tried to execute :%s/<.*>// but it will remove all things I think it's because it matches the last > for each line.

Possible duplicate of How to make regex matchers non-greedy? — Mass, May 20 at 12:38
I'm not sure if this is a duplicate, as the other question assumes you know what "non-greedy" means, where as this one doesn't. — Martin Tournoij♦, May 21 at 2:09

Ralf · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-20 13:08:47Z

4

I guess this would be the easiest solution:

%s/<[^>]*>//

It matches:

Of course the other solution is to use a non greedy operator as in the question linked by @Mass like this:

%s/<.\{-}>//

Ralf

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answered May 20 at 13:04

statox♦

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