subsonic - parsing "*" - quantifier {x,y} following nothing

Question

I'm using Subsonics Substage, and have just recieved this error? Any suggestions as to the cause?

subsonic parsing "*" - quantifier {x,y} following nothing

Answer 1

I've run into this issue using regular expressions in .Net, and the following helped me out:

http://bbrown.info/2007/01/02/parsing-quantifier-xy-following-nothing-considered-harmful.aspx

This is the code I had that was experiencing the issue is similar to:

public void foo(string path, string userSearchPattern)
{
    const string kPattern = "*";

    // Interestnigly, using "*" here works ok.

    string[] dirs = Directory.GetDirectories(path, kPattern, SearchOption.AllDirectories);

    foreach (string subDir in dirs)
    {
        // user search pattern is "*"

        Match m = Regex.Match(subDir, userSearchPattern);

        if (m.Success)
        {
            // do something fun here
        }
    }
}

I changed kPattern and the userSearchPattern passed in to the following and all seems well. I had not put much thought into the regular expression I was creating, but the first comment in the post linked above revealed the facepalm moment -- I needed to tell the regular expression object I wanted zero or more of something...

string userSearchPattern = ".*";
foo(somePath, userSearchPattern);

I do not use Substage, but perhaps you are creating a query with "*" and need to tell it zero or more of something.