Insanity

[Tim Daneliuk]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> 
>>Thanks - very helpful.  One followup - your re works as advertised.  But
>>if I use: r'\[PROMPT:[^]].*\]'  it seems not to.  the '.*' instead of just '*'
>>it matches the entire string ...
> 
> 
> it's not "just '*'", it's "[^]]*".  it's the "^]" set (anything but ]) that's repeated.
> 
> "[^]].*\]" means match a single non-] character, and then match as many
> characters as you possibly can, as long as the next character is a ].
> 
> "[^]]*\]" means match as many non-] characters as possible, plus a single ].

Got it - 'Makes perfect sense too

> 
> 
>>which seems counterintutive to me.
> 
> 
> then you need to study RE:s a bit more.
> 
> (hint: an RE isn't a template, it's a language description, and the RE engine
> is designed to answer the question "does this string belong to this language"
> (for match) or "is there any substring in this string that belongs to this
> language" (for search) as quickly as possible.  things like match locations
> etc are side effects).

Yes, I understand this.  But your clarification is most helpful.  Thanks!

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Tim Daneliuk     tundra at tundraware.com
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