From: diz rael <dizraelus@...>
Date: 2006-01-25T15:07:31+09:00
Subject: subsequence regular expression

Hi,

I'm trying to extract a certain sequence from a
string. Best described by example:

s =
"5b300ba00260bababababababababababababababababa000bd1007bd10b810ba92"
slice^--------------------------------------------^

I want to extract a slice of the string starting from
the beginning and extending upto the end of the long
"ba" sequence. What I'm trying to do is post-process a
large dump of memory from an embedded system. The
stack region is initially cleared out to bababa... So
after the application finishes, the "dirty" portion
gives the depth of the stack. There may be stray "ba"
values at various places in memory written during the
normal course of the application's execution. In the
above
example, the "dirty" portion is 
5b300ba00260.

Anyway, I tried the following:

s=~/.+?(ba)+/
$& => "5b300ba"

It so happens that a "ba" was created on the stack, so
the regexp thinks it ends there, when in fact the
string I want it to return is:
5b300ba00260

Is there a regexp that can handle this or is this a
fundamentally difficult algorithmic problem (kind of
related to longest common subsequence I guess).

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks a lot!

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