Must be a bug in the re module [was: Why this result with the re module]

[Chris Melville]

> Disagree in this case, where the whole regex
> matches an empty string. Greadiness will match
> as much as possible. So it will also match
> the empty strings between consecutive
> characters as much as possible, once
> we have properly defined all the unique
> empty strings. Because of greadiness,
> fewer matches should be found. In this
> case, it should find only 4 matches
> (shown in my steps) instead of 6 matches
> (shown in your steps).
>
> Yingjie
>
I'm sorry but I really don't understand where your coming from.

Your regex says "Zero or more consecutive occurrences of something, 
always returning the most possible".  That's what it does, at every 
position - only matching emptyness where it couldn't match anything 
(findall then skips a character to avoid overlapping/infinite empty 
matches),  and at all other times matching the most possible (eg. "has a 
lam" not "has", " a ", "lam").

Perhaps someone else can look at this and comment on whether findall is 
doing what it is supposed to, or not. To me, it is.

Cheers, JB