[TriLUG] A curious regular expression

[Jim Ray]

Aaron,

You have to be the most technically savvy detail-oriented person I have ever
met.  You go, man, go!

Regards,
 
Jim
 
Jim Ray, President
Neuse River Networks
tel: 919-838-1672 cell: 919-606-1772
http://www.Neuse.Net
 
Connecting You to the World since 1997
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
Behalf Of Aaron S.
> Joyner
> Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 4:33 PM
> To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
> Subject: [TriLUG] A curious regular expression
> 
> Marty Ferguson wrote:
> > Jim is a truly mighty person.  When he showed up at our "We are Linux
> > Entrepenuers"
> > booth, my dad (a BSD dude) and I were running  back in 1997, Jim was
> > wearing a
> > "Whirled Peas" custom silkscreened T-shirt.
> > (.... get it... "world peace" ... the  [.*\@{,99}]#&% regex hippie)
> 
> 
> Forgive me for latching onto a rather curious portion of your message,
> but that REGEX is a most unusual one.it's syntactically valid (your
> brackets match, your braces contain an actual numerical range
> representation, etc), so I have to think you spent a moment constructing
> it, but it's very unlikely to match a sensible string?
> 
> Potential matches include:
> .#&%
> *#&%
> .@#&%
> *@@#&%
> 
> or any combination of the leading . and * followed by 0 to 99 @'s, then
> followed by the string #&$.  I suppose it could be used to indicate a
> Bugs Bunny style expletive of up to 103 chars in length, with increasing
>  lengths involving just padding the @'s, possibly found in the middle of
> some other text?
> 
> A more general and flexible regex might be something like
> /[.*#&%]{,99}/, unless in your experience they always start with . or *,
> for some reason?  I'd also include ! and $ in the list of potential
> character matches commonly found in cartoon expletives.
> 
> Or, is there some more subtle intended implication I'm overlooking,
> here?  :)
> Aaron S. Joyner
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