Hi again, Aaron:
string = 'This is a line of text 111111. T2his i2s al2so a2 lin2e' +
'will eventuallyrunoverats string is longer than normal. Somwer' +
'some more text'+ x'0D25' + 'over at some point simple stri.'+
'This is the last sentence in the paragraph.' + x'00';
pattern = '(\S\S{40,}|.{1,40})(\s+|$)' + x'00';
FWIW, if you want to know what your code is doing... The first element
of the regmatch_t MODS contains where the regular expression matched
against the "whole" expression.
I haven't tested it, but if I'm reading your pattern right, the first
element in the array should point to this:
This is a line of text 111111. T2his i2s
why? Because your expression looks for any 40 characters (that's what
.{1,40} does -- one to forty of any character. RE's are "greedy", so
it'll take the 40 characters rather than the one) followed by either
the end of the line ($) or the "s" character. So it's showing you a
match with 39 characters followed by an "s". Since 39 is the most
amount of characters it can grab (that's what I mean by "greedy") that
are immediately followed by an "s".
The next element of the array matches your first subexpression.
Subexpressions are the things in parenthesis. Your first one is
(\S\S{40,}|.{1,40}) -- which means 40 or more of the letter S or 1-40 of
any character.
Since, as we already know, the whole expression matched 39 characters
followed by an s, the first subexpression will contain those 39 characters.
The 3rd (and final) element of your array should just be the 's'.
Because your 2nd (and final) subexpression matches one or more of the
letter s, or the end of the line. If I'm right about the whole
expresssion matching 39 chars followed by an 's', this last element will
just contain that 's'.
Since I see nowhere in your expression where multiple 'ssssss' exists,
the ones that require multiple 'ssss' to match, won't match. So that
last bit HAS to either be a single s, or the end of the string...
I have to admit, trying to figure out what your expression would match
has given me a bit of a headache :) After thinking that hard, I'm
sure there's smoke coming out of my ears :) But, anyway... let me know
if I'm right, and if it makes sense to you now...
And then let me know what you're really trying to accomplish and I'll
see if I can think of a better way.
midrange.com
