shortest match regexp operator anyone?

[Harald Kirsch]

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

> Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> writes:
> > With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> > this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.
> 
> It sounds like you want something similar to the (?> ...) in Perl 5.6.
> Neither SRE nor the current version of PCRE support this, though.
> Personally I'd just code it explicitly, as 'index = s.find('<A>') ; if
> index != -1: # check for B ...'.  Wordier, but doesn't require regex
> arcana.

Reading the docs about (?> ...) at
  http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html#DESCRIPTION 
I agree to the phrase `regex arcana'. And I don't see how it could
simulate a shortest match.

Thanks,
  Harald Kirsch.
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erdös
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***