From: Daniel Sheppard <daniels@...>
Date: 2008-04-03T12:32:01+09:00
Subject: Re: confused by 'test'.gsub(/.*/,'x')

 
> I would have expected one greedy match for the entire text. 
> Instead I guess it's first getting the zero match and then 
> the full match.

Actually, it's vice versa. It matches the whole string (greedy), then
matches the end of string. The "test" string is seen by the regex engine
as:

test<end of string>

.* first matches "test". <end of string> is a special 'character' that
is not consumed by ".", so the remaining string is then "<end of
string>", This is also matched, as it contains zero or more characters
(but is not then matched infinitely, as the position in the string has
not advanced.

Dan.