On Wed, 12 May 2004 02:12:19 +0200, Florian Gross wrote:

> Kristof Bastiaensen wrote:
> 
>> Yes, that would clarify the situation, but is it the correct
>> behaviour?  I would think that (?!a)a doesn't mean the same
>> character, but consecutive ones.  Because it doesn't consume
>> the character, it effectively is the character 'before' the
>> match (if any).  The other behaviour wouldn't make sense,
>> because (?!a)b is then exactly the same as b.
> 
> I think that it's the intended behavior. Just use /(?!a).b/ if you want 
> to consume the character.

Hi,
You are right, I looked it up in the manual, and there it was.  The
term zero-width-look-ahead pretty much says it all.  I must have
gotten the definition all wrong.

> 
> Thinking about this, it is indeed possible to implement fixed-width 
> look-behind -- interesting.

I was thinking more about something like variable-width look-between :-)
Meaning for example a(?^\w+)b would match any a(.*)b if (.*) is
not equal to (\w+)

> 
> Regards,
> Florian Gross

Thanks,
Kristof