in reply to Re^3: What are greedy and lazy matching in Perl?
in thread What is greedy and lazy Matching in perl

This seems to me to capture the essence of the behavior of lazy quantification.

The general usage of 'lazy' in the context of programming is: deferred or on-demand; with the complementary term being 'eager'.

I think that overloading lazy to mean non-greedy for this unique usage, just creates the potential for confusion and unreal expectations.


Anyone got any experience of this phone's predecessor?

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
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  • Comment on Re^4: What are greedy and lazy matching in Perl?

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Re^5: What are greedy and lazy matching in Perl?
by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Jul 30, 2015 at 13:03 UTC
    ... the context ...

    But the context is a discussion of regex quantification, and what is the meaning of deferred or on-demand quantification?

    I will make my last-ditch stand upon an appeal to authority: The Book* by Friedl, which uses "lazy" as the primary term for this quantification mode. And there you have it: Friedl said it; I believe it; that settles it!

    * At least, the second edition of The Book. For some reason, I couldn't dig out my copy of the first edition, but I'm sure it uses the same terminology. I never bought the third edition. While preferring the term lazy, Friedl also acknowledges the terms "minimal matching", "non-greedy" and "ungreedy". I think I would use maximal/minimal matching in full-blown pedant mode (it is completely unambiguous WRT, e.g., deferred/on-demand/eager evaluation), but too cumbersome for everyday use; greedy/lazy for me. Ungreedy is just more Newspeak and so not to my taste.


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