Cheat Engine

[Bit Byte]

I try retrieve some startTime and endTime values.
The values are 25/09/2023--10:20:30 and 02/10/2023--20:30:40 respectively.
When I print them the output values are correct (see image included).

But when I try to use match in the following it does not capture the seconds but captures all the others (see image included)

[ParkourPenguin]

The pattern `.-` matches the least amount of characters it can.

The part matching minutes is surrounded by colons. That means `.-` must match everything until the next colon.
For seconds, there is no such limitation. It must start at a colon, but it's not required to end anywhere in particular. Given that, the least amount of characters `.-` can match is 0.
e.g.:

[AylinCE]

@ParkurPenguen captured the parsing and selection parameters correctly.

Yes, restricted parsing and reading: "(.-)", full line or spanning reading: "(.*)"
You don't want to use this ( "(.*)" ) between lines, maybe used at the last read point.

Of course, there are more practical ways and symbols to read and parse these directories in Lua.

However, for beginners, I am covering the most ordinary expressions in order to see what it does and how to apply it.

Here's a fix that reads the seconds;

[Bit Byte]

I had already tried using (.*) before posting here but still had problems.
If there is data in cell after the end date then that is also captured and then then the seconds part is not calculated properly.

[ParkourPenguin]

If you don't want to match everything, then don't write a pattern that matches everything.
Character classes exist in Lua. i.e. '%d'
https://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#6.4.1