From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2007-12-11T09:50:09+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Word Loop (#149)

On 11/12/2007, Joe <qbproger@gmail.com> wrote:
> /(.*?)(.)(.(?:..)+?)\2(.*)/i
>
> break it up:
> (.*?) looks for a non-greedy string of anything
> (.) any character
> (.(?:..)+?) non-greedy matching of an odd number of characters.  I'm
> not sure what the ?: adds to the regular expression.
> I got this: "(?: )      grouping without backreferences" from here:
> http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html#11

Yes, makes sense. This group would not be used in the match result.

> \2 matches the any character from before

I wonder if these are still regular epxpressions with those backreferences.

> (.*) a string of any length at the end
>
> i - at the end that means case insensitive.
>
> Joe

Thanks for the nice explanation.

Michal