in reply to Perl Pattern Matching & RegEx's

You want to use  +? as in \w+? , see perlfaq6, perlrequick

The akward to use and outdated YAPE::Regex::Explain can help explain

the problem (\w+)

use YAPE::Regex::Explain;
print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(
qr/AAA\w+AAA/
)->explain;
__END__
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:AAA\w+AAA)

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  AAA                      'AAA'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \w+                      word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or
                           more times (matching the most amount
                           possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  AAA                      'AAA'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[download]

the solution (\w+?) 

use YAPE::Regex::Explain;
print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(
qr/AAA\w+?AAA/
)->explain;
__END__
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:AAA\w+?AAA)

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  AAA                      'AAA'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \w+?                     word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or
                           more times (matching the least amount
                           possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  AAA                      'AAA'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[download]

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Re^2: Perl Pattern Matching & RegEx's
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 07, 2013 at 14:04 UTC
[reply]

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