# Case against ".\*" regexp **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 16, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056 "2007-03-16T20:59:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/1 "2007-03-16T20:59:21Z")
Some time ago I remember reading a post in this list against using “.\*” regexp but I cannot find it – I guess I don’t remember the right keywords ☹ Does anyone remember that? ## Thanks a lot, Ed Encontrá a “Tu psicópata favorito” [http://tuxmaniac.blogspot.com](http://tuxmaniac.blogspot.com) The future is not what it used to be. – Paul Valéry ---
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 9:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/2 "2007-03-16T21:05:22Z")
I didn’t see that, but the .\* regex can easily misfire. There’s a great book on this called “Mastering Regular Expressions” from O’Reilly. The author’s name I think is Jeff Friedl. – Giles B. [http://www.gilesgoatboy.org](http://www.gilesgoatboy.org) > **[Giles Bowkett](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com)** > > half-disavowed old blog. new blog at gilesbowkett.com [http://giles.tumblr.com/](http://giles.tumblr.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 9:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/3 "2007-03-16T21:11:24Z")
On 16.03.2007 20:58, Edgardo H. wrote: > Some time ago I remember reading a post in this list against using > “.\*” regexp but I cannot find it – I guess I don’t remember the right > keywords ☹ > Does anyone remember that? Not exactly. But you should not use “._" nested in another starred expression because that will usually lead to massive backtracking. Another problem is, that "._” matches the empty string which is often not what you want. Kind regards robert ---
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 11:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/4 "2007-03-16T23:14:56Z")
On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 05:10:08AM +0900, Robert K. wrote: > On 16.03.2007 20:58, Edgardo H. wrote: > > > Some time ago I remember reading a post in this list against using > > “.\*” regexp but I cannot find it – I guess I don’t remember the right > > keywords ☹ > > Does anyone remember that? > > Not exactly. But you should not use “._" nested in another starred > expression because that will usually lead to massive backtracking. > Another problem is, that "._” matches the empty string which is often > not what you want. And also eats as much string as it can without causing the regexp to fail - .\*? is the non-greedy form. ---
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 9:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/5 "2007-03-16T21:31:26Z")
Edgardo H. schrieb: > Some time ago I remember reading a post in this list against using > “.\*” regexp but I cannot find it – I guess I don’t remember the right > keywords ☹ > Did you probably mean this thread? > [Regexp backtracking issues in 1.8 - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/100364) regards Jan ---
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 11:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/6 "2007-03-16T23:26:57Z")
On 3/16/07, Jan F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Edgardo H. schrieb: > > > Some time ago I remember reading a post in this list against using > > “.\*” regexp but I cannot find it – I guess I don’t remember the right > > keywords ☹ > > Did you probably mean this thread? > > [Regexp backtracking issues in 1.8 - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/100364) Hmm I am not sure this one was what OP meant, was there not a problem with the greedy match eating up “\<” s in xml/html if I remember correctly OPITOP (OP in the other post 😉 asked why %r{(\<._\>)_} === “**” Regexp.last\_match.captures gave [‘ **** ’] instead of [‘’, ‘’, ‘’]** **> regards > Jan** **HTH Robert** ---
**Author:** ![Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@Edgardo\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Edgardo_H)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2007, 7:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/case-against-regexp/89056/7 "2007-03-17T07:30:33Z")
“Edgardo H.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes: > Some time ago I remember reading a post in this list against using > “.\*” regexp but I cannot find it – I guess I don’t remember the right > keywords ☹ > Does anyone remember that? > > Thanks a lot, > Ed I don’t remember seeing anything that explicitly states that you should not use .\* - however, many people do use it when they shouldn’t. If we assume the regexp engine is correct (and there have been some posts regarding the correctness of ruby’s regexp in version 1.8), there shouldn’t be any issue with using .\*, but there are some points to consider. Many of these relate to the more general application of regular expressions. Possibly the main issue relates to how the RE is anchored. If you just have a RE of ._, well, your pretty much matching against the whole string and I guess you would say the match is pretty pointless. More often you will use ._ with some other constructs. In this situation, you do need to be careful to ensure the RE is anchored in some way. If not adequately anchored, your RE match can involve a lot of backtracking. The .\* is greedy and will attempt to match the biggest string possible, then the next biggest and then the next to next biggest and so on. If you don’t have adequate anchoring, in the worst case, it will back track to the very first character - for a long string, this could be very inefficient. In fact, I remember seeing a post from someone in the perl group years ago who thought they’d found a bug in perl that caused it to go into an infinite loop. It turns out it wasn’t infinite, just a poorly anchored RE which was taking so long to do all the backtracking that it gave the appearance of an infinite loop - if theuser had waited long enough, the program would have terminated eventually. Often, people use .\* rather than spending the time to analyse the real patterns and strings they are processing. Anchoring to the beginning/end of the string is often sufficient to drastically improve performance - but using non-greedy modifiers where appropriate and anchoring to larger distinct patterns in your string will help. If you know all your strings will have certain characteristics, like a sequence of 4 digits, then incorporate that information into your RE - put \d\d\d\d (or whatever) rather than .\* to represent that pattern. Think about ways to give the regexp engine as many clues or as much information as possible and your unlikely to get poor performance or unexpected results. There is a very good book from O’Reilly called “Mastering Regular Expressions” - can’t remember the author’s name, but recommend it as a read. Its not a thick book and has some really interesting background and explination of different regexp engines/approaches. Tim