help with simple regular expression grouping with re

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <wkbtftdo1r.fsf at turangalila.harmonixmusic.com>,
Dan Schmidt  <dfan at harmonixmusic.com> wrote:
>
>  So "(.*?)" and "([^"]*)" both solve the problem; you don't need to
>  disallow quotes _and_ match non-greedily.

In general, though, character classes are much faster than *any* form of
"." that might involve backtracking.  I believe this is still true even
with "non-greedy" specified.  People who use regexes heavily tend to
automatically try to phrase things via character classes when possible.
What I don't know is whether using non-greedy with a character class
adds anything.
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