u just gave a pointless example,

alias test {
if ($regex(<blockquote><b>http://tinyurl.com/1c2</b>,/<blockquote><b>(http://tinyurl.com/1c2.*)/i)) echo -a $regml(1)
}

if we already know, what we are looking for, there is no needed it

$regex(<blockquote><b>http://tinyurl.com/1c2</b>,/<blockquote><b>(.+)<\/b>/i) $regml(1)

look, its not about the grammar
since we know the link its on

http://tinyurl.com/1c2<\/b> i dont see a real reason to use (.+?) when in this case will do the same thing as (.+) cause matching, all things after , it will stop on <\/b> and, in this case, it will only match the links