Re: The shortest possible sequence match with Lua regular expressions

[David Given <dg@...>]

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Peter Cawley wrote:
> With the pattern '(/.-/)$', you're asking Lua to match a forward
> slash, then match as few characters as possible such that what then
> follows is a forward slash followed by the end of the string. After
> the first forward slash in the pattern is matched against the first
> forward slash in the input, the minimum amount which can be captured
> to get a forward slash followed by the end of the input is the entire
> of the input.

I note that this:

string.match('/dev/myprog/image/xyz/', '(/[^/]-/)$')

...produces the expected output.

I'll admit that I've never really found - very intuitive, for this sort
of reason. I tend to prefer using + and * instead with explicit rejects
for invalid input, like above.

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