Re: Perl 5's "non-greedy" matching can be TOO greedy!

>>>>> "Deven" == Deven T Corzine <[email protected]> writes:

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.

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