Re: Leftmost longest match with DFA search

Stefan Monnier wrote:
> Can someone point me to articles that discuss various ways to get the
> leftmost longest match when implementing regexp search using a DFA?
>
> The "obvious" solution of turning the problem "search for RE" into the
> problem "match .*RE" (where I use "match" here to mean "anchored
> search") only gives you the leftmost shortest match.
[snip]
>         Stefan

I've used the approach to compile a DFA for the reverse RE, say ER, and
first match .*ER on the reverse text to find the leftmost anchor point.
  Then match RE from that point to find the longest span.
--
Daniel Villeneuve
Kronos