RegEx expression is not matching the string as expected

I have a large number of lines of text that I want to parse in notepad++ using regular expressions.

See some examples of the lines I am working with below (which I have modified a little bit to ensure I don't accidentally show any sensitive data):

set routing-instances Vgege443rt3t interface xe-1/3/0.239

set routing-instances Vhr56yjmj interface xe-1/3/0.242

set routing-instances Vm6uj5hvegfee interface xe-1/3/0.243

set routing-instances Vyt3ety34nth5rh interface xe-1/3/0.244

set routing-instances Vk6jrtgrghrege interface xe-1/3/0.245

set routing-instances Vretgetyjygrefef interface xe-1/3/0.246

set routing-instances Vg4etghhthy interface xe-1/3/0.247

set routing-instances V56u5hh5hgdfg interface xe-1/3/0.252

set routing-instances Vmjyuj6jg interface xe-1/3/0.253

set routing-instances Vrtg4t4yg interface xe-1/3/0.255

set routing-instances Vg4ty4hrh interface xe-1/3/0.256

set routing-instances V67ujjthjg interface xe-1/3/0.257

set routing-instances Vgfewfwffmklfpom4 interface xe-1/3/0.258

Now all I want to do is isolate the string/word that begins with 'V'. So looking at the first few lines above for example, the strings I am looking to isolate are as below:

Vgege443rt3t

Vhr56yjmj

Vm6uj5hvegfee

Vyt3ety34nth5rh

In order to achieve this within notepad++ I applied the below regular expression:

 V.+\s 

which I believed would capture just the single string I am interested in.

However, when I did this, it captured more than I wanted. See below a couple of examples of what this regex expression captured when I applied it:

Vgege443rt3t interface xe-1/3/0.239

Vhr56yjmj interface xe-1/3/0.242

Vm6uj5hvegfee interface xe-1/3/0.243

Vyt3ety34nth5rh interface xe-1/3/0.244

Vk6jrtgrghrege interface xe-1/3/0.245

So obviously, it started the pattern from the 'V' which is what I had wanted. But rather than stopping the pattern at the first blank space which is what I thought the \s would achieve, it looks to have just continued on to the end of the line.

Can anyone advise what is the inaccuracy within my regex that is causing this problem?

In Notepad++ you could get a match only with:

\bV\S*(?=\h)

Explanation

• \b A word boundary to prevent a partial word match
• V\S* Match a V char and optional non whitespace chars
• (?=\h) Positive lookahead, assert a horizontal whitespace char to the right

Regex101 demo.

If there could be for example no non whitespace chars before the V char, and you want to match only word characters:

(?<!\S)V\w*(?=\h)

Regex101 demo.

Try this: (V[^\s]+)\s

That should capture V followed by anything that's not a space, up to the first space character.