I wish I knew something (significant) about the Perl or Java implementations. In fact, quite the opposite is true - I've done no more than read the quotes in the Perl headers, yet.:-P

That's part of the reason I submitted this question. I'm quite aware that Perl beats Java hands down - the book has enough examples to nail that down even if I didn't already believe it from previous experience. I'm also aware that shorter isn't necessarily better.

If there's some particular insight as to why it would be worse in this particular case, I'd be delighted to be enlightened. As it is, in my ignorance, I like the + possessive because I think it looks more readable than the (?>) alternative, and is likely a better mnemonic, since I have to keep looking at the man page to remember which odd character goes into (?>) .

Java golf. That'd be a laugh. 'Look, I done it in 15!' 'Characters?' 'No, classes!' Thbbppt.

note:Thanks to whoever edits the above link to regex.info for fixing my stupidity.

In reply to Re: Re: Possessive Quantifiers by Ferret
in thread Possessive Quantifiers by Ferret

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