Simply put, it's trying to find a fit. If .* matched to the end, then the pattern after .* wouldn't match, thus it wouldn't be matching anything. Regex don't work just left to right matching whatever they can as they go. They look forward and backward to find an appropriate match. Since the regex contains the $ for the end, it works from there backwards to match as well.
-Kendall On Monday, April 2, 2012 7:50:39 AM UTC-4, Ptarmigan wrote: > > $pattern ="/(^.*?sheet\/)pub(.*)(\&[a-z\=]*$)/"; >> > > I arrived at the above pattern to parse a published gdoc spreadsheet url: > example - > > > https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_GB&hl=en_GB&key=0BcCVZg3fefASrFG1P7HxN1Mnb241cFNKS0dVUNjUO5c&output=html > > > > The part of the pattern after 'pub' is the bit which puzzles me. The first > set of parentheses after 'pub' can contain anything. So why doesn't it grab > everything up to the end of the line ? > > It seems to be halted in a non-greedy way by the last parentheses which > defines a string connected to the EOL and stretching back to the first > encountered ampersand. > > Why this works, I do not know. I'm glad it does. Does anyone know why i.e > why the (.*) after 'pub' doesn't overrule the (\&[a-z\=]*$) ? > > tom > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "BBEdit Talk" discussion group on Google Groups. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at <http://groups.google.com/group/bbedit?hl=en> If you have a feature request or would like to report a problem, please email "[email protected]" rather than posting to the group. Follow @bbedit on Twitter: <http://www.twitter.com/bbedit>
