Programmer Humor

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Oh boy what a beautiful regex. I'm sure it does something logical and easy to understand. (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/programmerhumor@lemmy.ml

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^.?$|^(..+?)\1+$

Matches strings of any character repeated a non-prime number of times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vbk0TwkokM

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[–] explore_broaden@midwest.social 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, the first one matches only 2 more characters while the second matches 1 or more. Also the +? is a lazy quantifier so it will consume as little as possible.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah, didn't know +? was lazy, thanks

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I thought, the +? was going to be a syntax error. 🙃

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

I was like, why specify "one or more" and then make it optional? Isn't that just .*?