About regular expression

Posted by Tkl1129 on Wed 06 Jul 2011 09:16 AM — 2 posts, 14,412 views.

Tkl1129 Hong Kong Wed 06 Jul 2011 09:16 AM #0

1. Whats the different between (.+?) , (.*?) ? I do serval testing but still don't know the difference between.

2. How regular expression apply to Alias? when will use that to match the things type in?

seems Alias : abc * & contenr : if xxx else xxx
it totally same case? or have other usage?

Thanks

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Wed 06 Jul 2011 09:55 AM #1

Quote:

1. Whats the different between (.+?) , (.*?) ?

.+ matches one or more of any character.

.* matches zero or more of any character.

The ? means "non greedy". In the case of .* the least number it could match would be zero. In the case of .+ the least number it could match would be one.

Regular expressions

Regular expressions (as used in triggers and aliases) are documented on the Regular expression tips forum page.
Also see how Lua string matching patterns work, as documented on the Lua string.find page.

Scroll down to "greedy matches".

I don't understand the second question. Can you give an example?