> I know, that for a Java Fan it might be very hard to adopt the Perl-inherent DWIM scheme when interpreting questions, but why LanX jumps on that bandwaggon is beyond me.

Come on, keep cool! I just can't resist a good pun! =)

Just think of me as too ignorant as to fully understand your question... ;-)

> and if you have a FINITE SET of input strings, the cardinality of the sets that represent the results of the presented regexs may very well differ and thus be sortable. So your ivory tower arguments are mostly for the dustbin...

true, but you only limited the sets of input strings and not the sets of regexes or allowed regex commands.

IIRC Friedl (or perldocs?) describes in his book a regex with only two nested parens and quantifiers which would recursively backtrack for years!

Without a detailed description we have to answer the question in generality, and fast solutions are not really likely!

Cheers Rolf

In reply to Re^4: Analysis of Regular Expressions by LanX
in thread Analysis of Regular Expressions by PetaMem

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.