From: Kristof Bastiaensen <kristof@...>
Date: 2004-06-30T03:08:00+09:00
Subject: Re: another strange regexp case

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 11:05:43 -0600, Ara.T.Howard wrote:

<snip>
>> irb(main):004:0> /(theone)?/.match(" theone").to_a
>> => ["", nil]
> 
> ? means 'zero or one'
> 
> we start a the beginning of ' theone' and instantly find a match: zero of
> them.
<snip>
> 
>    if you create a regexp without anchors and with portions that can match zero
>    things and have not done so out of absolute need - your code has a bug.

Thanks for the answer.  I expected the pattern to expand greedily,
but I forgot it will return the first match, which is the empty
match.  You are right, /(theone)?/ is a silly thing to write,
finally I just needed another regexp for my problem.

Thanks,
Kristof