Murray: I could kick myself for not seeing that one (* = 0 or more, well it sure found 0) On 9/26/05, Murray @ PlanetThoughtful <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I recently encountered a strange behaviour, could someone please > > countercheck it, to either tell me there is an error in my pattern? > > > > I have a test string: "7005-N/52" > > I have two match patterns: a) "/([0-9]*)\/(.*)/i" > > b) "/([0-9]*)\-(.*)/i" > > I check the test string with the help of preg_match, and they both > > matched, but normally variant a) shouldn't have matched. > > > > Normally I test my patterns with the tool "The Regex Coach", and > > according to this tool it shouldn't have matched. > > PHP version is 5.0.4, PCRE extension version is 4.5 01-December-2003 > > Hi Jens > > Your first pattern 'matches' because it finds a hit on the "/52" component > of your test string. > > If you look at the pattern itself, it's because you're using the > 'zero-or-more-occurrences' quantifier (ie "*") in the first part of your > pattern: "([0-9]*)". > > It's a valid hit, because there are zero incidences of numeric characters > immediately prior to the "/52" component of the test string. > > Changing the "*" to a "+" (at least one or more occurrences) could 'fix' > that pattern (ie so that it doesn't match your string), depending on any > other values being tested by it. > > Much warmth, > > Murray > --- > "Lost in thought..." > http://www.planetthoughtful.org > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
