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From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: Help needed with regexps
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 19:37:32 GMT	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <jwvwu6qrcvv.fsf-monnier+gnu.emacs.help@asado.iro.umontreal.ca> (raw)
In-Reply-To: pan.2004.02.13.19.17.40.790445@dzr-web.com

> 		:front "<style\\s-+\\(\\s-*.*\\s-+\\)*.*css\"?\\(\\s-*.*\\s-*\\)*\\s-*>"

Regexps like A*.*B* are asking for trouble because there is an exponential
numberof ways to match them and the regexp-engine uses backtracking.
So it will get stuck trying them all, potentially for hours or even years.
To you it just looks like "it's stuck".


        Stefan

  parent reply	other threads:[~2004-02-13 19:37 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2004-02-13 19:17 Help needed with regexps D. D. Brierton
2004-02-13 19:21 ` D. D. Brierton
2004-02-13 19:37 ` Stefan Monnier [this message]
2004-02-13 19:57   ` D. D. Brierton
2004-02-13 20:16 ` D. D. Brierton

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