but your explanation was succinct, so now I understand...

My rational was that I thought the first greedy match for .* (the whole string) would be one match. Then it'd be forced to backup a letter at a time all the way to the the "h" (so 'lori' could match too), and each time would also be another match, thus equaling 7.

Now if I can ever figure out what the hell dynamic/static scoping is. :-)
~stratkid