# Regular Expression Too Big

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regular-expression-too-big/146352>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 20, 2008, 9:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regular-expression-too-big/146352 "2008-08-20T09:00:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kineticac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kineticac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kineticac)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 9:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regular-expression-too-big/146352/1 "2008-08-20T09:00:43Z")

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Hi Guys,

Not sure exactly what happened or what caused the error, but when I  
try to start my server or do a ‘rails -v’, I’m getting these strange  
errors:

$ rails -v  
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/  
1.8/rubygems.rb:75:in `require': /System/Library/Frameworks/ Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/universal-darwin9.0/ rbconfig.rb:165: regular expression too big: /\$\$|\$\(([^()]+)\)|\$\ {([^{}]+)\}/ (SyntaxError) /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/ 1.8/universal-darwin9.0/rbconfig.rb:168: regular expression too big: / \A[^:]+(?=(?::(.*?)=(.*))?\z)/ from /System/Library/Frameworks/ Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:75 from /usr/bin/rails:9:in`require’  
from /usr/bin/rails:9  
$ ruby script/server  
script/server:2:in `require’: ./script/…/config/boot.rb:97: regular  
expression too big: /^[^#]_RAILS\_GEM\_VERSION\s_=\s\*["’]([!~\<\>=]\*  
\s\*[\d.]+)["’]/ (SyntaxError)  
from script/server:2

It says something about the regular expression being too big? This  
happens in all checkouts of my code now, and even different projects.  
The only thing I did was did a pretty big commit to svn.

Any ideas?

Thanks

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kineticac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kineticac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kineticac)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 12:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/regular-expression-too-big/146352/2 "2008-08-20T12:20:10Z")

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if thats the ONLY thing you did, have you tried rolling back a couple  
versions??