Re: Progressively slow pattern match

[Ralf Angeli]

* Alan Mackenzie (2006-05-17) writes:

> On Wed, 17 May 2006, Ralf Angeli wrote:
>
>>The original regexp looks something like
>>"\\(%+[ \t]*\\)*foo"
>>in order to match stuff like
>>%% %% %% foo
>
> Use "\\(%+[ \t]+\\)%*foo"

Thanks for all the explanations and suggestions, also from Kevin,
David and Stuart.  So it really was a badly written regexp. \c:

I think I'll settle with
"\\(%[% \t]*\\)?foo"
That means David's suggestion with an added "?" in order for it to
match a bare "foo" without preceding comment characters as well.  For
me it looks like the one easiest to understand.

-- 
Ralf