On Thu, 2016-05-05 at 10:31 -0700, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 05/05/2016 10:11 AM, Rick Stevens wrote:
>
> On 05/05/2016 08:56 AM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
> >
> > On 05/05/2016 03:35 AM, Ian Malone wrote:
> > >
> > > On 5 May 2016 at 10:27, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@gmail.
> > > com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, 2016-05-04 at 16:24 -0700, Samuel Sieb wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Oh, right. I never use a regexp that can match nothing, so
> > > > > I missed
> > > > > that. :-)
> > > > You never use '*'?
> > > >
> > > I guess he meant "match *only* nothing", most of the time using
> > > *
> > > you'll still use it in combination with a non-empty pattern.
> > > Easy to
> > > miss that only [something]* can match nothing and therefore
> > > first
> > > matches at the start of the line.
> > >
> > Yes, that's what I meant. I can't imagine where that would even
> > be
> > useful.
> How about looking for "something[0-9]*" so it would match
> "something" or
> "something0" or "something99". "*" can be useful, you
just have to
> be
> careful.
See, it's such an odd thing to do that people don't understand it. :-
)
It's not about using *, I certainly do use that. It's about making
a
regexp that can match the empty string.
I fail to see what's odd about it. When you match something with an
optional part it's completely normal.
poc