[xquery-talk] string manipulation

[Florent Georges]

Florent Georges wrote:

> John Snelson wrote:

> > "*?" is a reluctant version of the "*" quantifier, meaning
> > it matches the shortest sequence, rather than the longest.
> > My regular expression works because of this - but yours will
> > work as well.

>   Ok, thanks, I didn't know that.  BTW, Saxon 8.6.1 doesn't
> implement this correctly.  I'll send a bug report.

  Here is the response from Michael Kay
<URL:http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=14706002>:

    No, the "?" quantifier will match the shortest string
    that's consistent with the rest of the regex (to the
    right) finding a match, but it doesn't affect what's
    matched by previous terms in the regex. The "/" in /.*?$
    will always match the first "/" in the input string
    provided that what comes after it matches .*?$. The
    regex will only backtrack to find a different match for
    the "/" if the first match fails. Or to look at it
    another way, if there are several possible matches both
    starting at the same position, .*? will choose the
    shortest while .* chooses the longest.

  Regards,

--drkm



















	

	
		
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