From: Jim Burgess <jack.zelig@...>
Date: 2009-09-28T03:13:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular expression question

Vielen Dank f端r deine Antwort :-)
I was unaware that the reg ex would start from the point where it 
encounters the first character satisfying \w.
Regular expressions - sometimes I hate them more than I love them.
Thanks very much for your help.



> Eine kleine Misverstaendnis :-)
> 
> \w+ means "one or more from the set (alphanumeric + underscore)".
> The pattern will start trying to match at the beginning of the string,
> where it finds \w+, then the space, then more \w+. It grabs all of Ein
> because it hasn't found a space yet (but it also hasn't found any
> reason to stop proceeding along the string, since "E", "Ei", and "Ein"
> are all \w+). It only grabs the k in kleiner because that satisfies
> the pattern in non-greedy fashion.
> 
> In this particular case, the first + doesn't matter, because the
> pattern will keep going until it finds a space, so normal rules of
> (non-)greediness don't apply.
> 
> 
> David

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