Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!news.teledata-fn.de!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool3.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Message-ID: <1929900.aqSPkdTlGX@PointedEars.de>
From: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de>
Reply-To: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <cljs@PointedEars.de>
Organization: PointedEars Software (PES)
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:12:14 +0100
User-Agent: KNode/4.4.11
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit
Subject: Re: String.replace() with regex
Newsgroups: comp.lang.javascript
References: <16483917.24.1324118524679.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqlp16>
Followup-To: comp.lang.javascript
MIME-Version: 1.0
Lines: 59
NNTP-Posting-Date: 17 Dec 2011 14:12:15 CET
NNTP-Posting-Host: 06e5dfe2.newsspool2.arcor-online.net
X-Trace: DXC=nHl45987DKoFXUDVUnEXQmA9EHlD;3Ycb4Fo<]lROoRa8kF<OcfhCOkE[fcFYNkLVhDZm8W4\YJNl;?f@h5gMfbll\2B]UgGPibK0=M[3e_cOc
X-Complaints-To: usenet-abuse@arcor.de
Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.javascript:9350

Jason C wrote:

> I have this regex, which works as expected:
> 
> a = a.replace(/ itxtHarvested="(.*?)"/i, "");
> 
> I modified it to this:
> 
> a = a.replace(/\s*itxtHarvested="*(.*?)"*/i, "");
> 
> which I thought would be the same, but would make the /s and " optional.

How can it be the same then?  It would make leading white-space, and 
optional in that it would allow 0 or more of them, including `"""""'.
(This is probably not what you want.)

> But, in practice, instead of just removing it, it was being converted to
> something like:
> 
> 441?0?
> 
> (Or maybe 530"0"; I had made several modifications using the *, and now I
> don't remember which error went where.)

No, it was not.

> Does the * not mean "0 or more times" in Javascript like it does in other
> languages?

There is no "Javascript": <http://PointedEars.de/es-matrix>

The `*' means the same in ECMAScript implementations as in other programming 
languages.

> I know that a few things are different with JS (like the /s
> modifier), so I wasn't sure.

ECMAScript Regular Expressions do not natively support several PCRE 
features, but you can emulate some.  I have recently finished emulating 
support for Unicode character property escape sequences, named subpatterns, 
and the `x' modifier:

<http://pointedears.de/websvn/filedetails.php?repname=JSX&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fregexp.js>

> Or, is it just something flawed in my logic that made it not work as
> expected?

Both your logic and your question are flawed.

<http://jibbering.com/faq/#posting>
<http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise>


PointedEars
-- 
var bugRiddenCrashPronePieceOfJunk = (
    navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE 5') != -1
    && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mac') != -1
)  // Plone, register_function.js:16