Re: What's wrong with Tcl greediness?



Arjen Markus wrote:
The first quantifier you use is .*? - this is a non-greedy
quantifier. Its presence causes the _whole_ regular expression
to be non-greedy (a consequence of the regular expression
engine that is used, this makes it more efficient).

Also be aware that there are two ways of doing mixed greediness REs.
The Perl-derived systems do it one way, and the automata-theoretic
ones do it the other. Tcl uses an automata-theoretic RE engine, which
means that it can cope with evil cases comparatively easily. (The fine
details make my head ache...)

Donal.
.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: Help with a regular expression
    ... the regular expression -- I don't know what those two characters do ... They stop the parentheses from creating a submatch when the regular ... I'm not sure about the .NET regexp engine, ... When a pattern crosses the ...
    (microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript)
  • Re: Need help to split a string into text and numeric values !!
    ... There are many flavors of Regular Expression engines, ... (any character) ... The interpretations above are how the dot net RE engine would execute the ... I have found only one free RE interpreter, ...
    (microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript)
  • Re: Which Regex-Engine will be used in Ruby 1.8.3 Release?
    ... > * no one have verified regular expression compatibility in detail before. ... > * no one have proven the stability of the new engine. ... but without regular access to the internet. ... transfer the data somehow via internet to ...
    (comp.lang.ruby)
  • Re: Export all classes in call graph?
    ... >> Is there some regular expression or other technique I can use in a ... >> that will detect the presence of a method definition and a method call? ... Prev by Date: ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: Ruby regexp spec. (was: OT: Regexp buddy)
    ... comprehensive list of just what syntax ruby's regular expression ... that shows that ruby's regexp engine supports perl's "don't ... but that it does not support the ... in irb and see what happens, but it'd be nice if the documentation ...
    (comp.lang.ruby)