From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2007-07-25T02:35:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Regex Question

On 7/24/07, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com> wrote:
> your last question - (\w*)\1 matches the empty string. What the engine
> does is match (\w+) against M, then \1 against another M which fails.
> Likewise for Mi, Mis, Miss etc, till it hits the end and moves on to
> i, is, iss... when it suddenly succeeds. Illustrative examples:

Oops - Rob is right, of course - + being greedy, it tries \w+ =
Mississippi first, then shrinks from there:

>> show_regexp("MiMississippiMiMississippi", /(\w*)\1/)
=> "<<MiMississippiMiMississippi>>"

martin