And since the .+ is greedy, the C will never match.

Wrong. A regex will backtrack the + until the rest of the pattern matches. If the pattern doesnt contain a C then it will fail. The greedyness would only apply if there were more than one C's contained in the string. It would ignore all but the last.

Methinks you owe rob_au an apology and that you should reread perlre.

my @strings=("/^\\\n.....................C",
             "/^\\\n............C........C",
             "/^\\\n.....................B",
             "Foobar");


/(\/\^\\\n.+C)/ && print "---\n\n$1\n---\n\n" foreach @strings;
__END__
---

/^\
.....................C
---

---

/^\
............C........C
---
[download]

Yves / DeMerphq
---
Writing a good benchmark isnt as easy as it might look.

my $target = q{
  MM
  oo
 <
  -/
 /^\
: C :
8===8
 |^|
 |||
-~-~
};

print "Match!\n" if ($target =~ /\/\^\\\n.+C/m);
[download]

... produces ...

C:\>test.pl
Match!
[download]

Yes, I agree that it matches. But also:

my $target = q{
  MM
  oo
 <
  -/
 /^\
      : C :
8===8
 |^|
 |||
-~-~
};

print "Match!\n" if ($target =~ /\/\^\\\n.+C/m);
[download]

also produces "Match!", which it shouldn't.

Also,

my $target=q {
  MM
  oo
 <
  -       ^ ^
 /^\      @ @
: C :    ( o )
8===8     `+'
 |^|     O-X-O
 |||      / \
-~-~      O O
};

print "Match!\n" if ($target =~ /\/\^\\\n.+C/m);
[download]

doesn't match.

The regex doesn't therefore meet the specification of finding one Ascii picture within a larger picture!

Cheerio!
Osfameron
http://osfameron.perlmonk.org/chickenman/