From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2003-12-04T00:05:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Some Regexp

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, ts wrote:

> >>>>> "H" == Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@dmu.ac.uk> writes:
>
> H> Is this a limitation inherent in regexps, or just as they are
> H> implemented now?  I ask, because Lua (which uses % where we use \
> H> for things like \w, \d etc) has %bxy which matches a balanced x y
> H> pair and its contents.  Eg %b() would match the whole of
> H> "(an (example))".   The delimiters being one character only couldn't
> H> make a difference here, or could it?
>
>  Yes, this is because it use only *one* character for the delimiter that it
>  can make it work

OK, I'm probably going to regret asking this (because of the
complexity of Deterministic Finite Automata theory) but:

If the delimters were string constants, not regexps, and therefore
of constant length, how would a length greater than one cause this
to be impossible?

>
>
> Guy Decoux
>
>
        Hugh