that is, w/o the '?' after the char spec but different than:
$text =~ s/((?:\S{80,})?[,;.])(\S)/$1 $2/g;
[MAS] I'm not sure why this works for you. It didn't for me when I created
some test data and tried it. Mine worked the same as the greedy match and
only inserted one space at the last [,;.]. in this context the ?: is for
grouping purposes such that (?:a|b|c) is the (a\b\c) but $1 doesn't get
assigned anything because the ?: tells it to not backreference this match
group; however, you have it nested in another grouping that is apparently
capturing the backreference otherwise $1 would not be set. Here is a
snippet from O'Reilly under regular expression extensions:
(?:...)
This groups things like "(...)" but doesn't make backreferences
like "(...)" does. So:
split(/\b(?:a|b|c)\b/)
is like:
split(/\b(a|b|c)\b/)
but doesn't actually save anything in $1, which means that the
first split doesn't spit out extra delimiter fields as the second one does.
I did get the expected result for the first expression when I moved the
second ? inside the nested () of this expression.
Hmm - yes, that was the reason we tried using (?:...) grouping, so the ?
would be applied to the \S{80,}. So I saw a space added after every .,; -
that was more a test of what I thought the original RE was trying to do. I
missed the 'non-greedy' facet, that's exactly the answer I was looking for.
Thanks!
-------------------
Andy Bach
Systems Mangler
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Voice: (608) 261-5738 Fax: 264-5932
It's is not its, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's.
It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
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