Re: non-greedy pattern matching

[Tim Chase]

I'm trying to do a regexp replacement. My original line is
ignore MATCH1 ignore_again MATCH2

I want to match MATCH1 and MATCH2, so here's my trial:

s/^ignore \(.*\{-}\) .*\{-} \(.*\)/matched:\1,\2/gc

You're soooo close. :)  The \{-} is a *replacement* for the 
asterisk operator, not a modifier for it (like the question-mark 
in PCREs).  Thus, you want

s/^ignore \(.\{-}\) .\{-} \(.*\)/matched:\1,\2/gc

instead of

s/^ignore \(.*\{-}\) .*\{-} \(.*\)/matched:\1,\2/gc


-tim