Maximum length for a match

I know this may sound silly but given something like

if ($_ =~m/(one)|(two)|(three)/)

Is there a maximum length on the size of the item between "/" and" /"
?
Just curious as regards showing bad programming techniques.

TIA Paul

Paul Johnston

In article <>, Paul Johnston
<> wrote:

> I know this may sound silly but given something like
>
> if ($_ =~m/(one)|(two)|(three)/)
>
> Is there a maximum length on the size of the item between "/" and" /"
> ?
> Just curious as regards showing bad programming techniques.

There is no inherent limit. You are limited by your available memory
for Perl scalars. You can test this easily:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $re;
for my $x ( 'aaaa' .. 'zzzz' ) {
$re .= "($x)|";
}
my $s = 'XXXXX';
$re .= "($s)";
print "Length of RE = ", length($re), "\n";
if( $s =~ m/$re/ ) {
print "Match: $&\n";
}

__OUTPUT__

Length of RE = 3198839
Match: XXXXX


FYI: this newsgroup is defunct. Try comp.lang.perl.misc in the future.

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:21:50 -0800, Jim Gibson
<> wrote:

>In article <>, Paul Johnston
><> wrote:
>
>> I know this may sound silly but given something like
>>
>> if ($_ =~m/(one)|(two)|(three)/)
>>
>> Is there a maximum length on the size of the item between "/" and" /"
>> ?
>> Just curious as regards showing bad programming techniques.
>
>There is no inherent limit. You are limited by your available memory
>for Perl scalars. You can test this easily:
>
>#!/usr/local/bin/perl
>
>use strict;
>use warnings;
>
>my $re;
>for my $x ( 'aaaa' .. 'zzzz' ) {
> $re .= "($x)|";
>}
>my $s = 'XXXXX';
>$re .= "($s)";
>print "Length of RE = ", length($re), "\n";
>if( $s =~ m/$re/ ) {
> print "Match: $&\n";
>}
>
>__OUTPUT__
>
>Length of RE = 3198839
>Match: XXXXX
>
>
>FYI: this newsgroup is defunct. Try comp.lang.perl.misc in the future.

Many Thanks