From: Kenneth McDonald <kenneth.m.mcdonald@...>
Date: 2008-09-09T02:38:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Oniguruma question

I'm writing a library to make re's easier to use :-) This is in the  
test suite.

Thanks for the feedback, that comes as a real surprise to me. So maybe  
I'll try /..+?/

Cheers,
Ken
On Sep 8, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Robert Klemme wrote:

> 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
>