[Omaha.pm] Huh?

[Jay Hannah]

> Just ran across this and it stuck me as weird. Any idea why this
happens?
>  
> Given a regex "^$|^\d{1,7}$" ,  the rule says 
> "A 0 length string OR a number 1 to 7 characters in length". 

It does? Are you sure about that first dollar sign? Wacky. 

In Perl the regex you describe would be 

    /^(|\d{1,7})$/   (untested)

or

    /^\d{1,7}?$/     (untested)

^ and $ would only occur at the very start and the very end.

> Given a regex "^\d{1,7}|^$" ,  the rule says 
> "A number 1 to 7 characters in length OR a 0 length string ".
> 
> For reasons I can't seem to fathom, the first regex evals the 
> way I want, the second fails the empty string test. Ever seen 
> this before? Perhaps it's just a weird .NET regex quirk?
 
Uhh... I think my examples would pass in Perl. I can't comment on .NET
off the top of my head. :)

j