Makes sense!

EDIT:
  Why would it do that when it can match zero times?
I guess I was thinking that since (?:b=(\w))? prefers to match once it would influence the behavior of .*? in an analogous way to how (?:b=(\w)) would, which, as you explained, isn't the case.

In reply to Re^2: regex greediness by Danny
in thread regex greediness by Danny

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