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Question

Can someone please tell me why this regex pattern does nt match?

Answer 1

+5 A:

The ^ is an anchor, it only matches if the string starts with as13448.com.

You also seem to have the .com part double.

Jimmy Shelter 2010-01-06 13:25:05

Thanks Jimmy. I didn't even notice that.

jim 2010-01-06 13:25:42

Hey Jimmy, are there any good resources you can suggest for beginners? I actually like regex but need to learn a bit more.

jim 2010-01-06 13:29:52

Well, the `.com` part isn't doubled; in the first instance the dot isn't escaped, therefore matching any character.

Joey 2010-01-06 13:30:44

Should the dots always be escaped? I have seen a few other examples where they were not escaped.

jim 2010-01-06 13:33:38

I'm not Jimmy, but I found this site: <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/regex.htm> which explains RegExps especially for Apache. You're best off learning the exactly appropriate one because regexp implementations differ in annoying little details.

Carl Smotricz 2010-01-06 13:34:50

A non-escaped dot *will* match a dot, but it will also match any other character! So it will work, sort of. That's why people often get away with forgetting to escape it.

Carl Smotricz 2010-01-06 13:35:51

Thanks for the link and the explanation Carl. I'll have a look at that link now.

jim 2010-01-06 13:38:10

If dots are not escaped they mean any character (except newline).If you are starting to learn regular expressions I recommend you try reading http://www.regular-expressions.info/ and try testing them in either something like Perl or a simple interpreted language so you can better see what is going on.

ternaryOperator 2010-01-06 13:38:34

Hey Carl, thanks! That **is** a fantastic link.

jim 2010-01-06 13:39:19

I know PHP so I can use preg_match for that. Thanks ternary..

jim 2010-01-06 13:40:26

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Can someone please tell me why this regex pattern does nt match?

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