I have this regex: ^regex*\.0-9

You do not use code tags, so it's not clear what regex you have. Please see Markup in the Monastery, Writeup Formatting Tips and How do I post a question effectively?.

I going to guess that your regex is  /^regex*\.[0-9]/ You say that your regex matches "regex.1", which I can accept, but why would you think it would match "regex.abc", since "abc" has no relation to  [0-9] (a decimal digit)? Please see perlre and perlretut.

It seems as though the ? doesnt make the \. optional.

I don't see any  ? metacharacter. (Update: And what difference would you expect it would make if the  \. were optional?)

Update: When I first read "It must also match regex, but not regex.abc." in the OP, I thought codz67 wanted the regex also to match  'regex.abc' and was puzzled why it didn't. A more careful reading brings a better understanding. See discussion below. Oh, well...


In reply to Re: Regex \. help by AnomalousMonk
in thread Regex \. help by codz67

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.