On Dec 14, Randal L. Schwartz said:
>Deven> I haven't even SEEN an example where the current behavior is
>Deven> actually preferable than my proposed behavior, have you? (And
>Deven> I'd expect at least a FEW, though I suspect there are probably
>Deven> more counterexamples.)
>
>If I want the leftmost B that is followed by the shortest number
>of characters to get to a D, I write /B.*?D/. The "leftmost" part
>keeps getting left out of regex discussions, and maybe that's why
>you're thrown off. But it's a pretty consistent overriding factor.
>
>If you want something odd like "not necessarily the leftmost", then
>you'll need to speak more. But "leftmost" is fundamental to the
>design of regex. Don't mess with that. Or don't call it a regex any
>more.
You could use my sexeger technique to get this behavior (possibly):
$string = "aaabbbcccdddeee";
# regex to be reversed: /b(.*?)d/
$revstr = reverse $string;
($match) = $revstr =~ /d(.*?)b/;
No, that doesn't quite work. It works when you unroll the .*? loop:
# regex to be reversed: /b([^bd]*)d/
($match) = $revstr =~ /d([^bd]*)b/;
But then why would you use sexeger at all, when you can unroll the loop in
the forward direction?
($match) = $string =~ /b([^bd]*)d/;
--
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