Forums General Discussion Regular Expression Help file problem

The help file is correct (although unspecific) in this case.

Ignoring mIRC's identifiers, and focusing on PCRE, the following is true:

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Text: AAA
Regex: /A/
Matches: 1

Using the above regular expression yields exactly 1 match. Once the PCRE engine finds the first exact match within the text, it immediately stops searching. Therefore, the number of matches is exactly 1.

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Text: AAA
Regex: /A/g
Matches: 3

Using this regex, the g switch, (which is part of the regex, NOT part of mIRC), tells the PCRE engine to search again in the text that was not part of the previous matches. The engine continues searching until no further matches can be made in the text.


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mIRC simply returns whatever the PCRE engine provides as a 'total matches' result.

-genius_at_work