Re^2: match longest sequence in an "or" RE

I think one of the problems is the greedy .+ at the start of the regex. It would be better to leave it off or make it nongreedy. Then, just sorting by length decreasing makes the thing work again:

>perl -wMstrict -lE "say /^.+?(s m e f|s f pl|s f).+$/ for '-s m e f s
+ f pl s f-';"
s m e f
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Comment on Re^2: match longest sequence in an "or" RE Select or Download Code

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Re^3: match longest sequence in an "or" RE by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Sep 24, 2011 at 19:54 UTC
It's necessary to leave off the first `.+` entirely and sort all the captured alternations by length decreasing (or some similar approach). Just making the first `.+` non-greedy is not sufficient to find the longest match anywhere in the string: `>perl -wMstrict -lE "say q{'}, /^.+?(s m e f\|s f pl\|s f).+$/, q{' at offset }, $-[1] for '-s f s f pl s m e f-'; " 's f' at offset 1` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]