How does the ? make a quantifier lazy in regex
Posted
by
Uriel Katz
on Programmers
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Published on 2013-07-01T08:33:42Z
Indexed on
2013/07/01
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I've been looking into regex lately and figured that the ?
operator makes the *
,+
, or ?
lazy. My question is how does it do that?
Is it that *?
for example is a special operator, or does the ?
have an effect on the *
? In other words, does regex recognize *?
as one operator in itself, or does regex recognize *?
as the two separate operators *
and ?
?
If it is the case that *?
is being recognized as two separate operators, how does the ?
affect the *
to make it lazy. If ?
means that the *
is optional, shouldn't this mean that the *
doesn't have to exists at all. If so, then in a statement .*?
wouldn't regex just match separate letters and the whole string instead of the shorter string?
Please explain, I'm desperate to understand.
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