[wellylug] Regex, replace stuff in command line help...

[Grant McLean]

On Thu, 2006-06-29 at 11:51 +1200, David Antliff wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Grant McLean wrote:
> > An example may clarify:
> >
> >  $ echo '<img src="x.gif" border="0">' | \
> >  > perl -nle '/src="(.*?)"/ && print $1'
> >  x.gif
> >
> > Versus, without the ?
> >
> >  $ echo '<img src="x.gif" border="0">' | \
> >  >  perl -nle '/src="(.*)"/ && print $1'
> >  x.gif" border="0
> 
> Indeed, I am familiar with the non-greedy rule for ?. However, this 
> example is not analogous to your prior regexp because it includes a 
> suffix anchor (").

Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding.  In your original suggestion, you 
left out the anchors because you didn't know the context - that's 
exactly what I did too.  You assumed the OP would put something useful
after the .* just as I assumed they'd put something useful after the .*?

My point was simply that while .* and .*? are both useful in their own 
ways, .*? is generally safer and should be preferred, with .* being 
reserved for those cases where a greedy match is really required.

Cheers
Grant