Diff b/w Apache and PHP

Any questions involving matching text strings to patterns - the pattern is called a "regular expression."

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anjanesh
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Diff b/w Apache and PHP

Post by anjanesh »

Hi

Whats the difference between .* and .*? ?
Apache's mod_rewrite doesnt even allow the ? met character.

Thanks
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

.* keeps eating until there's nothing left infront of it
.*? stops if the next metacharacter in the pattern is allowed to eat a character ;)

It's called greediness - It's explained pretty well on regular-expressions.info and in perldoc ;)
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anjanesh
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Post by anjanesh »

Ah...Thanks.

But why isnt Apache's mode_rewrite allowing the ? meta char ?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

not that I remember. .*? is extended regex, from what I remember. mod_rewrite only supports a simple level of regex

This is why I often send my mod_rewrite code through a script to process :)
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