comment on

have a look at the "look-ahead assertion" in "perldoc perlre"

Your code is just an example to show that normally (when the g switch is set) a regex engine will start looking for it's next match _after_ the last character of the previous match. However, characters matched in a look-ahead assertion don't 'count' as far as the regex engine is concerned, and it will not automatically skip over them when trying to find the next match.

It's an advanced topic, and I really think you'd need to understand how regex engines work to understand this, to which end I'd highly recommend Jeffrey Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions.

UPDATE: changed wording in second paragraph

---
my name's not Keith, and I'm not reasonable.

In reply to Re: Explanation for Reg Expr by reasonablekeith
in thread Explanation for Reg Expr by decoder

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


good chemistry is complicated, and a little bit messy -LW
	PerlMonks