Re: potential preg_replace bug; unsure however

<Original message> From: alvarez@sto13.st-oneline.de <alvarez@sto13.st-oneline.de> Date: Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 08:55:15PM +0200 Message-ID: <200109011855.UAA14431@sto13.st-oneline.de> Subject: [PHP] potential preg_replace bug; unsure however > I built a Perl-style regex to match function calls in C-like > languages where $name is the functions name. The functions > are assumed to accept a single string as parameter. > > Here it is. > > /$name\s*\(\s*\"(.*)\"\s*\)\s*;/s > > The expression is successfully preg_match'ed on a stream > of code, but when preg_replace is passed the same expression > it does not return. The piece of code I tested this with was > fairly small so that an increased demand of computation time > is unlikely be the reason for this behaviour. > > Substituting the subexpression (.*) by ([^\"]*) remedies this. > > The version of the PHP install is 4.05. > > > Any ideas? > > > D. Alvarez Arribas <alvarez@st-oneline.net> </Original message> <Reply> Well... Don't think this is a bug. Regexps usualy are greedy. They try to take as much code/text as they can get. And well... '.*' can take up about everything it encounters. Actually (IMO) you should try to avoid using '.*'. What you mentioned "Substituting the subexpression (.*) by ([^\"]*) remedies this." is a much better solution. It's what you're looking for in the first place. I mean... you're looking for some text that goes 'till the ". Why would you want to use '.*' then? </Reply> -- * R&zE: -- »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» -- Renze Munnik -- DataLink BV -- -- E: renze@datalink.nl -- W: +31 23 5326162 -- F: +31 23 5322144 -- M: +31 6 21811143 -- -- Stationsplein 82 -- 2011 LM HAARLEM -- Netherlands -- -- http://www.datalink.nl -- ««««««««««««««««««««««««