Re: Less greedy pattern match

On Apr 16, 12:02 am, "Rajan" <svra...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "Ed Morton" <mor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
> news:48057145.9090408@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
> > On 4/15/2008 9:59 PM, Prateek wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> This question is regarding the less greedy regular expression pattern
> >> match. As you know, Perl provides less greedy pattern match parameter
> >> in the form of repetition?
>
> >> But does gawk provide anything similar?
>
> >> The sample I was trying was:
>
> >> echo ccccccd | gawk '{ print match ($0,c*?d)
>
> >> I was expecting value 6 as output
>
> > why?
>
> >> but was always getting value 1.
>
> >> (The above is only an example; my patterns are more complex and was
> >> trying to find less greedy operators)
>
> > There's no "less greedy" operator (to be honest, I'm not sure what
that
> > really
> > means or why it'd be more useful than a different RE), but if you post
> > some
> > sample input and expected output we can probably help get what you
want
> > using
> > the existing functionality.
>
> > Ed.
>
> match returns the index of start of match within the string not number
of
> occurrences .
> For less greedy expressions you can use interval expressions like c{1}. 
If
> you are looking for number of consecutive occurrences change your c*?d
to c*
> and print RLENGTH. If you are looking for occurrences that are
> non-consecutive use a gsub in combination with an interval expression.
>
> Rajan

Hi Rajan,
Can you please give an example of "if you are looking for occurrences
that are
non-consecutive use a gsub in combination with an interval
expression."

Thanks,
Prateek