Yes, you are correct - as written it could be interpreted to mean that zero or more characters after the 'X' are allowed. My write up of the problem was in error. If there are ANY flags in the second set of characters, there is a 'X' preceding them. It is illegal to have an 'X' without a following character. The basics are correct, though. I have two optional sets of flags (single characters) that I need to parse out into separate variables. By the way... have tried to simplify the problem. I am trying to parse a much more complicated string set.

In reply to Re^2: perl look ahead regular expression that is optional? by bigsipper
in thread perl look ahead regular expression that is optional? by bigsipper

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