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Occasionally circumstances arise where a regular expression can match two or more strings in a target. In general, the leftmost, then the longest, string is selected; that is: if two matches overlap, the one starting to the left is selected, and if two matches starting at the same character position exist then the longest one is selected.
Precedence in the way that regular expressions are resolved can be
forced by using the () grouping operator. For example,
John( Dixon)?
matches the regular expression ``John'' followed by zero or one
instances of the regular expression ``Dixon''. You can use brackets
in conjunction with the vertical bar to group alternatives. For
example,
factor(ies|y)
matches the words ``factory'' and ``factories'' slightly more
economically than the equivalent regular expression
factories|factory.
In the event that no ``|''s are present and there is only one ``
'',
``+'', or ``?'', the effect is that the longest possible match
is chosen. So ``ab'', presented with ``xabbbby'', will match
``abbbb''. Note that if ``ab'' is tried against ``xabyabbbz'', it
will match ``ab'' just after ``x'', due to the begins-earliest rule.
The decision on where to start the match is the first choice to be made, hence subsequent choices must respect it even if this leads them to less-preferred alternatives.