A hard challenge anyone?

[Jim Ault]

On 2/4/07 5:34 AM, "David Bovill" <david at openpartnership.net> wrote:

> Thanks a lot for the background and references Marielle. I'll take the tip
> of working outwards, and read up a bit more on regular expressions - one
> thing you mention which intrigues me is searching right to left... sounds
> like a technique to be used in regexp - but how?

The regEx engine will allow scanning of strings in many 'logic patterns',
some of which get so complex they are hard to debug.  The basic idea is to
either allow the largest possible match or the smallest, by category rather
than wild card matching.  Beyond this, you can do either|or, this and not
that, look forward from the match point, look backward from the match point,
and more.

The big caution is that the complexity will create false hits and misses
that are difficult to anticipate and debug.

Jim Ault
Las Vegas