From: MenTaLguY <mental@...>
Date: 2007-04-18T00:44:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Slow ruby regexes

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:10:11 +0900, Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote:
> LOL - now I'm confused, too. :-)  I was looking for something like (made
> up fake): "To prioritize branches of an alternative in sed you do sed -e
> 's/foo(!2bar|!1baz)/yummy\1/g'."  Of course this does not work with sed
> (at least no implementation of sed that I know).  Are there other tools
> that allow to embed something into a RX that will do this prioritization?

OHHHHHHHH.

| is a deterministic choice operator, so the branches are prioritized by default -- earlier alternatives take precedence over later ones.  Just write your RX alternatives from highest to lowest priority.

Does that answer your question?

-mental