From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2003-01-22T05:47:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Regular expressions


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Daniel Carrera (dcarrera@math.umd.edu) wrote:

> I'm having trouble with a simple match:
>=20
> >> line
> =3D> "<img src=3D'a.jpg' />"
> >> line =3D~  /(<img \.*>)/
> =3D> nil
>=20
> Shouldn't "." match anything other than "\n"?
> Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

In addition to the \. as mentioned early, .* is greedy, so if
you have:
<a href=3D"#foo"><img src=3D"bar.png"></a>
then /(<img .*>)/ will give $1 =3D '<img src=3D"bar.png"></a>'

You want either /(<img [^>]*>)/ or /(<img .*?>)/, the latter being
non-greedy.

--=20
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
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