RE: regex help

I agree. If you're only giving a match or no-match result, as in XML Schema,
greediness is irrelevant. 

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Your Name
> Sent: 19 January 2007 05:01
> To: xmlschema-dev@w3.org
> Subject: Re: regex help
> 
> 
> Just a note on the greediness mentioned here...
> 
> My understanding is that the greediness of a regular 
> expression is only an issue when you are capturing the values 
> of sub-patterns within the target data.  (e.g. in Perl 
> 'ML123' =~ /ML(\d+)/; captures 123 into $1.) When only doing 
> matching, eventually, if possible, the pattern will be 
> matched irrespective of whether greedy or non-greedy matching is used.
> 
> Greediness just affects whether the regular expression engine 
> attempts to grab lots of content for a sub-expression in it's 
> first attempt and them back track, or attempts to capture the 
> minimal amount in its first attempt and then forward track 
> (not sure if that's a proper term!).
> 
> If anyone's opinion differs, please let me know
> 
> 
>