Re: Regex is not being as "hungry" as it is supposed to

[Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com>]

2010/8/6 suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com>:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have a strange problem, recently some of my regexps started becoming
> less "hungry" than usual. For example I have a file like this,
>
>  #1 153030 120 = 423988
>  #2 152845 181 = 1500234
>  #3 155160 247 = 767821
>  #4 155160 310 = 11131347
>  #5 155160 319 = 13979167
>
> I wanted to remove the 3rd column of numbers along with the = sign. So
> I called `query-replace-regexp' with this regexp replacement,
>
> `[0-9]+ = ->'
>
> But this matches the numbers like this,
>
> 120 =
> 1 =
> 7 =
> 0 =
> 9 =
>
> where as I am expecting it to be this,
>
> 120 =
> 181 =
> 247 =
> 310 =
> 319 =
>
> This is just one instance, I have faced similar other cases. I get the
> proper expected match only for the first match, for the subsequent
> matches the regexp becomes less "hungry".
>
> Is this a consequence of some conflicting settings or a possible bug?
> I see this behaviour with GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1, emacs-snapshot from an
> Ubuntu Lucid ppa and emacs compiled from source on Fedora 12. (but the
> settings are identical for both these setups)
>
> Thanks in advance for any comments/hints about this issue. :)
>
> --
> Suvayu
>
> Open source is the future. It sets us free.
>
>

That's weird, it happens to me to on:
GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7600) of 2010-07-12 on 3249CTO

I noticed two things when tinkering around with this problem.

1. M-x re-builder correctly highlights the portions we both expect.
2. It's only the *highlighting* in query-replace-regexp that
   fails. When performing the actual replacing, it works just as
   expected.

I'm sensing that this is a bug of some sort and you should report it.

-- 
Deniz Dogan