$Bill Luebkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nex6 wrote:
> > if ($slurp =~ /"defaultusername"="(.+)"/i) {
>
> "(.+)" should probably be "(.+?)" to limit the match to the
> shortest path unless you know there are no more "s after it.
In this case it makes no difference, but in general a negated
character class is less likely to lead to unexpected matching
than a nongreedy modifier is. That is, I'd use '([^"]+)'
rather than '(.+?)'. To see why I prefer the negated character
class, consider a regex like
/<a href="(.*?)">/
Because of the nongreediness, it's true that the matching won't
get completely out of control, but suppose the string being
matched against is
<a href="/whatever/" target=_blank>Link <img
src="abc.gif"></a>
Now the captured string is '/whatever/" target=_blank>Link <img
src="abc.gif', which presumably was not intended. With
'([^"]+)', the match would have failed, which may have been the
intent. If not, the failure should at least indicate there may
be a problem with the regex.
--
Keith C. Ivey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Washington, DC
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