in reply to Re: Oddness with regex quantifiers
in thread Oddness with regex quantifiers

Hmm .. but isn't the zero implied by the null field?

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

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Re^3: Oddness with regex quantifiers
by moritz (Cardinal) on Nov 23, 2010 at 21:38 UTC
    Hmm .. but isn't the zero implied by the null field?

    Not if you expect .{MIN,} to match at least MIN characters. .{MIN,0} doesn't make much sense to me.

Re^3: Oddness with regex quantifiers
by elef (Friar) on Nov 23, 2010 at 22:03 UTC
    Hmm .. but isn't the zero implied by the null field?

    Not really, I don't think.
    If perl accepted {,X}, I'm pretty sure some people would assume that it stood for {1,X}, not {0,X}. After all, one to X matches makes more sense than zero to X matches in many situations.
    It's propably best to force people to make an explicit choice.

      I'm pretty sure some people would assume that it stood for {1,X}, not {0,X}.

      That says nothing without an idea of how common such an assumption would be made and an idea of the size of the negative impact making that assumption would entail.

      one to X matches makes more sense than zero to X matches in many situations.

      It makes sense in some situations, not necessarily many.

      It's propably best to force people to make an explicit choice.

      It's even better not to break backwards compatibility.

      Sorry, everyone, I guess I should have said 1, not 0.

      Alex / talexb / Toronto

      "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

        No difference.
        $ perl -E'say "aaa" =~ /a{2,}/' 1 $ perl -E'say "aaa" =~ /a{2,1}/' Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/a{2,1} <-- + HERE / at -e line 1.
Re^3: Oddness with regex quantifiers
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 23, 2010 at 22:01 UTC
    $ perl -E'say "aa" =~ /a{1,}/' 1 $ perl -E'say "aa" =~ /a{1,0}/' Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/a{1,0} <-- + HERE / at -e line 1.