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From: Nigel Reed <sysop@endofthelinebbs.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.misc
Subject: Re: Regex a couple of questions
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2026 10:16:45 -0500
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On Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:06:38 +0000 (GMT)
Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

> Good day folks,
> I appreciate this is an Acorn NG. But my questions though about Regex
> are directly connected to the VRPC-DL upon which I do all my Email and
> Newsgroup Reading and Writing... (NetFetch).
> 
> I've looked at Regex tutorials online and my brain slowly turns to
> mush... So please, I need a few point of clarification.  :-)
> 
> In Regex is  .* a real catch all ?
> 
> Example: Freds Pillows.*   
> 
> Will that catch everything that follows Freds Pillows; As after a
> while spammers will add a little something after the usual moniker?
> 
> 
> So if I have a Name.*  Will adding a space after the Name .* give a
> different result.
> 
> Name.*   or Name .*

.* is a greedy match for the given character, where . means any
character then yes, it should match until the end. If you added a space
then there would need to be a space in your string to match, but really
you should be using \s+ to catch one or more white spaces.


You can use one of the many regex checkers because not all regex
engines are built equal. I quite like https://regex101.com/ due to its
group highlighting.



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