Fredrik Lundh wrote: > Diez B. Roggisch wrote: > >> Welcome to the wonderful world of programming. Regular expressions are >> what they are because they are modeled after a certain theory - that of >> finite state automata and their correspondence to certain classes of >> grammars. > > (except that Python regexps are not always regular, of course. and that > back- tracking engines like the ones used in Perl and Python differs in > subtle ways > from "real" DFA-based engines, etc. but as long as you're looking at > things from a proper distance, you're right, of course)
They use backtracking? Thats news to me. I always thought that mechanisms like prefixes and backreferences can work in a strict DFA paragigm - with possibly very large automata, but nevertheless. Gotta go google I think.... -- Regards, Diez B. Roggisch -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
