Tim Peters added the comment: >> (?<=a)(?<=a)(?<=a)(?<=a)
> There are four different points. > If a1 before a2 and a2 before a3 and a3 before a4 and a4 > before something. Sorry, that view doesn't make any sense. A successful lookbehind assertion matches the empty string. Same as the regexp ()()()() matches 4 empty strings (and all the _same_ empty string) at any point. > Otherwise repetition of assertion has no sense. As I said before, it's "usually a silly thing to do". It does make sense, just not _useful_ sense - it's "silly" ;-) > If it has no sense, there should be an exception. Why? Code like i += 0 is usually pointless too, but it's not up to a programming language to force you to code only useful things. It's easy to write to write regexps that are pointless. For example, the regexp (?=a)b can never succeed. Should that raise an exception? Or should the regexp (?=a)a raise an exception because the (?=a) part is redundant? Etc. ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue14460> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com