regex match search or not to search
Re: System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex, C#
lets call the string to be searched target string
Desired Result: Efficiently Match a regular expression to target string. WHOLE target string should be consumed.
Actual Result: The Match searches as documented until it finds a match WITHIN the target string.
Can I indicate to method Match to consume whole target string or fail efficiently? with options or lookback
Perhaps the naming throws me. Boost library has two methods for their version of regex ...regex_match and regex_search
Here is an excerpt from Boost site
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://boost.org/libs/regex/doc/regex_match.html
The algorithm regex _match determines whether a given regular expression matches all of a given character ...
Note that the result is true only if the expression matches the whole of the input sequence. If you want to search for an expression somewhere within the sequence then use regex_search.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Perhaps I dont know how to use regex.Match efficiently
I understand
..if regex.Match return type Match with index of 0 and Length X, where X ..equals length of original target string ...
..then whole target string was consumed.
This could be inefficient for large target strings. Is this unrealistic?
I would like regex.match not to search through all text but to fail quickly.
It seems to me if I wanted regex.Match to search through the text I would precede all regular expressions with a optional wildcard such as
.* (dot asterisk)
Thanks in advance for your insights.
