From: Simon Strandgaard <neoneye@...>
Date: 2004-09-20T17:04:19+09:00
Subject: Re: regular expression seems broken not greedy when it should be

On Monday 20 September 2004 09:54, CarlosRivera wrote:
[snip]
> I thought that normally * was greedy and would try to match the largest
> string and not the tiniest.  If this is the case the "<<<" and ">>>"
> should be around the number "123" in the output for the first attempt
[snip]

Regexp usualy follows the left-most-longest rule..  
in your case the longest expression  * can find is the empty string.

--
Simon Strandgaard