"Xah Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 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: In other words, the "|" operator is never greedy. > > Note the need to inject the high-brow jargon "greedy"here as a > latch on sentence.
What is so hard to understand ? Should be perfectly clear even to a first year undergraduate. As for "greedy" even a minimal exposure to Djikstra's shortest path algorithm would have made the concept intuitive. And from memory, that is the sort of thing done in Computing 101 and in Data Structures and Algorithms 101 It seems to me that you want the Python doc to be written for morons. And that is not a valid complaint. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
