9fans archive / 2008 / 10 / 356 /    prev next

From: "Rudolf Sykora" <rudolf.sykora@gma...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] non greedy regular expressions
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:40:36 +0200

> Greedy leftmost-first is different from leftmost-longest.
> Search for /a*(ab)?/ in "ab".  The leftmost-longest match
> is "ab", but the leftmost-first match (because of the
> greedy star) is "a".  In the leftmost-first case, the greediness
> of the star caused an overall short match.

Ok, I finally see the point... thanks.
Only one last question: So is there any simple way (using existing
regexps) to find 'the interesting parts' in my last example?:
ABCthe_interesting_partCBA blabla bla ABCthe_interesting_partCBA ...
...i.e. delimited with ABC from the left and CBA (or e.g. EFG) from the right?
Say I have a file with such a structure and want to only get 'the
interesting parts' form it.

>
>> All the thinking about this is simply removed with 'non-greedy' ops.
>
> But it isn't (or shouldn't be).
well, I admit it isn't :)