From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-09-08T23:34:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Oniguruma question

2008/9/8 Kenneth McDonald <kenneth.m.mcdonald@sbcglobal.net>:
> For those adventurous souls who are already using Oniguruma...
>
> With the following Oniguruma re:
>
>  print  "aabb".index(/.+?(?<!a)/)
>  print "\n"
>
> My reasoning tells me I should be getting 3, but I'm getting 0. Basically,
> the .+ should force the re 'cursor' past at least the first a; after that,
> the negative lookback should force it past the first b. Could someone
> explain where I'm misunderstanding?

Your reasoning about ".+" is wrong. Non greedy matching does only mean
that the /end point/ of a match might be moved to the left, but never
the /start point/ be moved to the right.  So .+ matches directly at
the beginning of the string.

Any practical problem that you're trying to solve (and we can try to
tackle)? :-)

Kind regards

robert


-- 
use.inject do |as, often| as.you_can - without end