On Dec 14, Deven T. Corzine said:
>> You're asking for something like
>>
>> /(?<!b)(b.*?d)/
>>
>> which is an "optimization" you'll have to incorporate on your own.
>
>Thanks for the example. Unfortunately, your attempted workaround doesn't
>even work for the example string; the "a" preceding "bbbbccccd" isn't a
>"b", so the regexp engine is still perfectly happy with the same match.
>Even if it worked as you intended, it would have failed with something like
>"bbbabbbccccdddd", since the ".*?" would happily match "bbabbbcccc"...
Sorry, I was thinking backwards (when I was supposed to think forwards).
Using:
/(b(?!b).*?d)/
is what I'd meant to say.
I wouldn't call the current behavior a design flaw, though.
--
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