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From: weisberg@hpccc.HP.COM (Len Weisberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: how long is a {0,m} match?
Message-ID: <12170010@hpccc.HP.COM>
Date: 3 Aug 90 22:06:20 GMT
References: <12170008@hpccc.HP.COM>
Organization: HP Corp Computing & Services
Lines: 26

A few days ago I asked a question in a rather long form.
Let me try again a bit more concisely:


Here's another bit of confusing regexp behavior:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pattern:        applied to:  matches:

/a{1,4}/	'aaay'	     'aaa'
/a{1,4}/	'xaaay'	     'aaa'
/a{0,4}/	'aaay' 	     'aaa'
/a{0,4}/	'xaaay'	     ''
( ... more examples that fit the same pattern)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If there is some general principle about longest match, 
it seems to break when 0 repetitions match, but only when
the match is not at the start of the string.

Does this make sense?   Is it a bug?

Any enlightenment appreciated.
Thanks,

- Len Weisberg - HP Corp Computing & Services - weisberg@corp.HP.COM