Re: RE question

[Bobby Kleemann <neta.rkleeman@com>]

Doug was asking for a RegEx that would do what you had written, except he
wanted it to start from the end of the comment and work backwards,
matching as little as possible.  Since you cannot do a backwards RegEx in
perl, just do a forwards one by reversing the text you are searching on.  

 _ _ _
 Bobby Kleemann <neta.rkleeman@com>
 http://www.neta.com/~rkleeman/

On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Reza Naima wrote:

> if it's the same expression, why did you say it wouldn't work?
> and i don't understand you forward and backward ungreedyness... 
> 
> your original example had one comment in it, and that worked for one comment.
> if you mean having multiple comments, then the simplest way to do it is with
> a loop.. i'm not sure if i just misunderstood you or not..
> 
> gooz:~ >cat /tmp/aa
> $_ = '
> /* Yadda  /
>  * Yadda  /
>  * Yadda */
> 
> /* this is
> another comment */
> 
> ';
> 
> while (s[/\*(.*?)\*/][]s){
>         $a = $1;
>         $a =~ s/\n/ /g;
>         print "comment [$a]\n";
> }
> gooz:~ >perl /tmp/aa
> comment [ Yadda  /  * Yadda  /  * Yadda ]
> comment [ this is another comment ]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 02, 1999 at 12:54:59PM -0800, Doug Shea sent me this...
> > 
> > 
> > --- Reza Naima <reza.reza@net> wrote:
> > > well, this kinda works..
> > > 
> > > $_ = 'comment /* this is a * test dumbass /* */ foo */';
> > > 
> > > m[/\*(.*?)\*/];
> > > print "$1\n";
> > > 
> > 
> >     Syntactic differences aside, that's exactly what I already have...
> > 
> > /(\\\*.*?\*\\)/
> > 
> >     That's the one that matches from the beginning of the first comment
> > to the end of the last comment before the rest of the pattern. The
> > un-greedy-ness doesn't help, in this case; there's no way to make it
> > BACKWARDS-un-greedy, only FORWARDS un-greedy.
> > 
> > ===
> > 
> > Doug
> > 
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