the buggy regex in Python

[Yingjie Lan]

--- On Thu, 11/25/10, MRAB <python at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> re.findall performs multiple searches, each starting where
> the previous
> one finished. The first match started at the start of the
> string and
> finished at its end. The second match started at that point
> (the end of
> the string) and found another match, ending at the end of
> the string.
> It tried to match a third time, but that failed because it
> would have
> matched an empty string again (it's not allowed to return 2
> contiguous
> empty strings).
> 
> > Isn't this a bug?
> >
> No, but it can be confusing at times! :-)
> -- 

But the last empty string is matched twice -- so it is 
an overlapping. But findall is supposed not to return
overlapping matches. So I think this does not live up
to the documentation -- thus I still consider it a bug.

Yingjie