Non greedy pattern match in sed

[Matthew Hawkins]

Just nitpicking ;)

Kim Holburn (kim.holburn at anu.edu.au) wrote:
> "*" means multiple instances of (whatever came first in this case ".")

Actually "+" means multiple (1 or more) matches of the preceeding atom.
"*" means 0 or more. [1]  Subtle but important difference.

Just to confuse things, in POSIX extended regular expressions, "?" means
0 or 1 matches (equivalent to {0,1}) of the preceeding atom, but is used
to specify a non-greedy match in Perl RE's.

You could go really nuts and try an expression like so:

/[[./*.]]([^[.*/.]])+[[.*/.]]/

[1] Assuming POSIX 1003.2 extended RE's

-- 
Matt
"So, logically, if she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood, and therefore a witch!"
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
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