regex efficiency with the ambiguous, greedy and promiscuous .*

[Dideved]

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System: The following 10 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/4565193.htm [webmasterworld.com] by phranque - 5:43 pm on Apr 20, 2013 (utc -7)

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> Rules with (.*) at the beginning or the middle of a pattern can be
> optimised a LOT.

A lot? The difference is less than a millisecond. It's less than even a microsecond. It's a textbook micro-optimization. When you tell people that this will make a big difference, you're blatantly misinforming them.

[g1smd]

I'm done arguing here.

[phranque]

.* means match any character zero or more times.
technical or not, how much more ambiguous can you possibly get?
end of that discussion.


this is how ibm's rational functional testing team (as "technical" as it gets) describes .*:

The .* pattern is thus the most promiscuous pattern, matching nearly anything including nothing.

(http://books.google.com/books?id=4NSbIuobgEMC&pg=PT489 [books.google.com]