in reply to counting overlapping patterns

You need to tell the regex engine to pick up after the last match, using the \G anchor: 
    my $count  = 0;
    my $string = "AAAA";

    $count++ while $string =~ /\GAA/gc;

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 Argh, sorry, I was wrong. Check out this thread instead.

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Re^2: counting overlapping patterns
by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2005 at 20:28 UTC
    $count++ while $string =~ /\GAA/gc;
    Er, no, the \G there serves no purpose as that's the default behaviour anyway. On this other hand this will work, by only consuming the first character of the match: 
    $count++ while $string =~ /A(?=A)/g;

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    Dave.

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      Dave you truly are "the m". That works as promised. Thanks!
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Re^2: counting overlapping patterns
by Anonymous Monk on Feb 18, 2005 at 20:25 UTC
    Ah... the \G anchor, of course.... it doesn't seem to work for me. Still getting 2. Are my cut-n-paste skills poor?
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Re^2: counting overlapping patterns
by holli (Abbot) on Feb 18, 2005 at 20:25 UTC
    This returns 2. Reasonable because the position of the last match is right after the 2nd "A".
    IŽd like to be disproven, but i think this cannot be solved by a simple regex.
    Disproven ,)


    holli, /regexed monk/
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