note JavaFan It depends on the data -- if the data is incorrectly formatted (a missing ' for instance), they may not do the same thing. And <c>'.+?'</c> has the tendency to be slower than <c>'[^']+'</c>. Usually, the more restrictive a pattern is, the faster: there's less opportunity to backtrack. There's much more commitment in <c>'[^']+'</c> then there is in <c>'.+?'</c>: the former will always match two quotes in succession, and whatever is in between, regardless how the rest of the pattern looks like, but that's not the case with <c>'.+?'</c>; there's nothing stopping the <c>.+?</c> part to match quotes. 967819 967860