Re: REGEX: grouping of alternative patterns [SOLVED]

Robin Vickery schreef:

[snip] Because each of your subpatterns can match an empty string, the lefthand subpattern always matches and the righthand subpattern might as well not be there.

Indeed they do, i did not realise that.

The simplest solution, if you don't want to completely rethink your regexp might be to replace \s with [[:space:]], remove the delimiters and the i modifier and just use eregi(). like so: Because this is for a proof-of-concept application that will only be used by me for the time being, and because I always give a default value when specifying 'not null', I'm going to use the following, and think about a more general solution if and when the need arises.

This matches both my cases: /\s*(?.+?)\s*int\s*(\(([0-9]+)\))?\s*(unsigned)?\s*(((not\s*null)\s*(default\s*(.*|[0-9]*)?))|((auto_increment)?\s*(primary\s*key)?))\s*/i

[snip] -robin

Thanks for your insights, Robin ! Greetz, Stijn