Let me expose one another fucking incompetent part of Python doc, in illustration of the Info Tech industry's masturbation and ignorant nature.
The official Python doc on regex syntax ( http://python.org/doc/2.4/lib/re-syntax.html ) says: --begin quote-- "|" A|B, where A and B can be arbitrary REs, creates a regular expression that will match either A or B. An arbitrary number of REs can be separated by the "|" in this way. This can be used inside groups (see below) as well. As the target string is scanned, REs separated by "|" are tried from left to right. When one pattern completely matches, that branch is accepted. This means that once A matches, B will not be tested further, even if it would produce a longer overall match. In other words, the "|" operator is never greedy. To match a literal "|", use \|, or enclose it inside a character class, as in [|]. --end quote-- Note: âIn other words, the "|" operator is never greedy.â Note the need to inject the high-brow jargon âgreedyâ here as a latch on sentence. ânever greedyâ? What is greedy anyway? âGreedyâ, when used in the context of computing, describes a certain characteristics of algorithms. When a algorithm for a minimizing/maximizing problem is such that, whenever it faced a choice it simply chose the shortest path, without considering whether that choice actually results in a optimal solution. The rub is that such stratedgy will often not obtain optimal result in most problems. If you go from New York to San Francisco and always choose the road most directly facing your destination, you'll never get on. For a algorithm to be greedy, it is implied that it faces choices. In the case of alternatives in regex "regex1|regex2|regex3", there is really no selection involved, but following a given sequence. What the writer were thinking when he latched on about greediness, is that the result may not be from the pattern that matches the most substring, therefore it is not âgreedyâ. It's not greedy Python docer's ass. Such blind jargon throwing, as found everywhere in tech docs, is a significant reason why the computing industry is filled with shams the likes of unix, Perl, Programing Patterns, eXtreme Programing, âUniversal Modeling Languageâ, fucking shits. ---- A better writen doc for the complete regex module is at: http://xahlee.org/perl-python/python_re-write/lib/module-re.html See also: Responsible Software Licensing http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/responsible_license.html Xah [EMAIL PROTECTED] â http://xahlee.org/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list