comment on

Hi Chris

just a quick example on greedy and non greedy quantifiers, under the Perl debugger:

  DB<1> $string = "foo bar foo bar foo";

  DB<2> x $string =~ /(fo.*ar)/
0  'foo bar foo bar'
  DB<3> x $string =~ /(fo.*?ar)/
0  'foo bar'
  DB<4>
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As you can see the default "*" quantifier is greedy, so that the regex tries to match as much as possible. Using the modified "*?" quantifier, the regex becomes non greedy. You will see the same type of result if you try the "+" and the "+?" quantifiers.

In reply to Re^5: Perl RE; how to capture, and replace based on a block? by Laurent_R
in thread Perl RE; how to capture, and replace based on a block? by taint

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