On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 01:29 +0200, Filip Jursik wrote:
> Well, I thought, that when I write:
> 1) /A(.*)B/, $1 will hold the longest string enclosed by A and B
> 2) /A(.*?)B/, $1 will hold the shortest string enclosed by A and B
>
> Does it work like this or the "?" after the ".*" has a different meaning than
> changing the match from the longest to the shortest possible one?
Not exactly. For: /A(.*?)B/ It will match the first A, then the shortest
string to a B. For: /A(.*)B/ It will match the first A, then the longest
string to B.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
chomp( my @strings = <DATA> );
print "/A(.*)B\n";
for ( @strings ){
/A(.*)B/;
printf "%-30s %s\n", "'$_'", "'$1'";
}
print "/A(.*?)B\n";
for ( @strings ){
/A(.*?)B/;
printf "%-30s %s\n", "'$_'", "'$1'";
}
__DATA__
A B
A A B
A B B
A A B B
A B B B B B B B B
--
__END__
Just my 0.00000002 million dollars worth,
--- Shawn
"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
Aristotle
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