One of the little bugaboos that got me a lot my first N years of doing
Perl was that {m,} is a quantifier meaning "m or more", but {,n} is *not*
a quantifier meaning "up to n". People like symmetry, and it seems
logical that {,n} would DWIM, but it doesn't. I still make the mistake on
occassion.
I can only think of one reason to disallow it (unless there's a parsing
issue somewhere that I can't immediately see): some people might expect
DWIM behavior to be implicit M=0, and others might expect M=1. But I
honestly don't see that as compelling--if you read {m,} as "m or more",
and {,n} as "n or less", then I think M should clearly default to 0.
Is there something I'm missing here? If not, why not add some DWIMiness
and make {,n} work?
Trey
--
Trey Harris
Secretary and Executive
SAGE -- The System Administrators Guild (www.sage.org)
Opinions above are not necessarily those of SAGE.
