Re: Right Associative Matching Example (for Docs)

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:04:49 +0100
Paolo <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:46:36AM -0700, Chris Babcock wrote:
> > >     match (:: :a:) /(?ir:":*:e:".+?"([[:print:]]+?)".+?\n)/
> ...
> >     match (:: :a:) /(?ir:":*:e:".+?"([[:print:]]+?)".*?\n)/
> 
> yep, that does match last field - however I get no difference with
> just '?i:'; also, simple
> 
>   /":*:e:".+?"([[:print:]]+?)".*?\n/
> 
> seems to do the job as well, for last non-null-value-in-quotes,
> whereas 
>   /":*:e:".+?"([[:print:]]+?)".*\n/
> 
> would yield the 1st such value after :*:e:.

Is that a bug then? Both produce the same results for the exterior
match, but the behavior I obviously expected based on the docs was for
the first "+?" to be 'lazier' than the second as a default, this being
the behavior to be altered by the 'r' switch. 

> > The problem is that I was overcompensating for a bad habit. I've
> > been trying to break the habit of using * when I mean +. If you
> > don't have a comma or some other character at the end of the line
> > then the closing quotes go to satisfy the ".+?" and the comma
> > becomes the last 'field'.
> 
> unfortunatly CSV isn't that simple to parse

I wasn't expecting as much to parse CSV files generically as to
simplify a practical application for something mentioned in the docs. 

When there is a new line available as a deliminator, it is too
valuable to ignore. A more practical application for the feature (if it
worked as expected) would be for parsing text where the new line is not
a consistent feature, for example HTML tables.

Chris


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