Hi, I am trying to make a regex that matches a term with an arbitrary number of arguments. It has the format: TERM KEY(-?PRE:COL[,-?PRE:COL]*) with at least 1 PRE:COL and at most N (comma separated) PRE:COL, each of them possible prefixe with 1 '-' char I have the following: ^([[:word:]])[[:blank:]]*KEY\\(-?[[:word:]]+:[[:word:]]+(,-?([[:word:]])+:([[:word:]]+))*\\) But this does not work: e.g. the string KEY1 KEY(TEK:KDE),NOCASE,OPT,PRIMARY has the following matches (notice the empty matches): what[0] = KEY1 KEY(TEK:KDE),NOCASE,OPT,PRIMARY what[1] = KEY1 what[2] = TEK what[3] = KDE what[4] = what[5] = what[6] = and the string KEY1 KEY(RKM:KEN,RKM:REL,RKM:VAL),NOCASE,OPT,PRIMARY has the following matches (notice match 4 and the lack of the last PRE:COL pair): auxWhat[0] = KEY1 KEY(RKM:KEN,RKM:REL,RKM:VAL),NOCASE,OPT,PRIMARY auxWhat[1] = KEY1 auxWhat[2] = RKM auxWhat[3] = KEN auxWhat[4] = ,RKM:VAL auxWhat[5] = RKM auxWhat[6] = VAL Is there a regex that sort of does does what I want? TIA -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Joost Kraaijeveld Askesis B.V. Molukkenstraat 14 6524NB Nijmegen tel: 024-3888063 / 06-51855277 fax: 024-3608416 web: www.askesis.nl