Well, clearly I'm an idiot. I thought I'd drop a mention of YAPE::Regex::Explain to show how to figure out what a regular expression is saying, so I could point out the "invented" bit. But I find that the bit I thought was "invented" seems fine. Sorry about that. When I run:

use YAPE::Regex::Explain;
print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(qr/(.*)(_\d{11,}?.*)(\.\w+)/)->explain
+();

[download]

I get:

$ perl xxxyyyzzz.pl
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:(.*)(_\d{11,}?.*)(\.\w+))

matches as follows:
  
NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (                        group and capture to \1:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    .*                       any character except \n (0 or more times
                             (matching the most amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of \1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (                        group and capture to \2:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    _                        '_'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \d{11,}?                 digits (0-9) (at least 11 times
                             (matching the least amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    .*                       any character except \n (0 or more times
                             (matching the most amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of \2
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (                        group and capture to \3:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \.                       '.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \w+                      word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or
                             more times (matching the most amount
                             possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of \3
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[download]

And I thought the \d{11,}? was the invented bit. I'll have to play with that sometime.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

In reply to Re^3: why my reg ex matches greedy? by roboticus
in thread why my reg ex matches greedy? by lngperl

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