From: James Sanders <james.sanders@...>
Date: 2008-05-06T10:42:26+09:00
Subject: Possible regular expression

Ruby's regular expression engine appears to act incorrectly when given a
non-greedy match-range of the form {m,n}?

Take this example:

"Age: 21" =~ /Age.{0,60}: ([\w]+)/

This returns 0, as expected and $1 is set to "21"

However:

"Age: 21" =~ /Age.{0,60}?: ([\w]+)/

This returns nil and $1 is set to nil.

I believe the greedy and non-greedy cases should be equivalent in this
case, but are not.

I've included a tarball with two files, one written in perl and the
other in ruby, performing this match. The perl script acts as expected.

Apologies if this is a known bug that I have been unable to find on
RubyForge, or if this is expected behavior. If it is the former I would
appreciate anyone who could point me at the bug listing, and if it is
the latter, I would appreciate enlightenment on the reason for this
behavior. In any other case, it would be much appreciated for anyone to
verify that this behavior is a bug, and I will file it.

Thanks

Attachments:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/attachment/1854/re.tar

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