python regex: variable length of positive lookbehind assertion

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Jussi Piitulainen <jussi.piitulainen at helsinki.fi>:

> Michael Torrie writes:
>
>> On 06/15/2016 08:57 AM, Jussi Piitulainen wrote:
>>> Marko Rauhamaa writes:
>>>> And nothing in alister's answer suggests that.
>>> 
>>> Now *I'm* surprised.
>>
>> He simply said, here's a regex that can parse the example string the OP
>> gave us (which maybe looked a bit like HTML, but like you say, may not
>> be), but don't try to use this method to parse actual HTML because it
>> won't work reliably.
>
> Interesting how differently we can read alister's answer. It was only
> two sentences, one of which Marko replaced with "[...]" before adding
> his own one-liner that is still quoted above.
> [...]
>
> That followed the fully quoted original message, and then there was an
> attributed citation from a Bengamin Disraeli, separated as a .sig.
>
> [...]
>
> A surprise calls for an explanation. Or should I say that I felt that
> this particular expression of surprise seemed to me to call for an
> explanation, or in the very least that an explanation would not do much
> harm and might even be considered mildly interesting. And I saw a fully
> adequate explanation: that the question was not about parsing HTML. So I
> said so.

This is so meta.


Marko