In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Fabian Holler wrote:
> Howdy,
>
>
> i have the following regex "iface lo[\w\t\n\s]+(?=(iface)|$)"
>
> If "iface" don't follow after the regex "iface lo[\w\t\n\s]" the rest of
> the text should be selected.
> But ?=(iface) is ignored, it is always the whole texte selected.
> What is wrong?
The ``+`` after the character class means at least one of the characters
in the class or more. If you have a text like:
iface lox iface
Then the it matches the space and the word ``iface`` because the space
(``\s``) and word characters (``\w``) are part of the character class and
``+`` is "greedy". It consumes as many characters as possible and the
rest of the regex is only evaluated when there are no matches anymore.
If you want to match non-greedy then put a ``?`` after the ``+``::
iface lo[\w\t\n\s]+?(?=(iface)|$)
Now only "iface lox " is matched in the example above.
Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
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