Date:         Wed, 24 May 2006 15:43:44 -0700
Reply-To:     David L Cassell <davidlcassell@MSN.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         David L Cassell <davidlcassell@MSN.COM>
Subject:      Re: How to use Perl Regular expressions
In-Reply-To:  <200605241309.k4OAkKdS016687@mailgw.cc.uga.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

The suspcicously-young-looking Ken Borowiak replied:
>I have not taken a look at RegexBuddy, but thanks for the tip, Alan!
>
>I believe Alan provided a regex to parse the already delimited file. But he
>brings up a few points that could be elaborated on.
>
>  This expression (?<=^\w+\s{3,}), takes the form of (?<=MORE_REGEX_STUFF),
>which means it is POSITIVE LOOKBEHIND (which is a zero-width assertion).
>However, many regex engines only support lookbehinds of fixed width
>(including SAS
>implementation of Perl regex). So the full regex provided will result in an
>error in SAS V9.
>
>P Zout!
>Ken

The SAS regex engine can only do what is in the Perl 5.6.1 regex engine.
So that limits us to fixed-width here.

The SAS regex engine can also only do what can be passed from SAS
down to that regex engine under the hood, which also puts additional
limits on the capabilities.  That's why we don't have the regex modifiers
/s or /m or /e or /ee or /x or ...

HTCT,
David
--
David L. Cassell
mathematical statistician
Design Pathways
3115 NW Norwood Pl.
Corvallis OR 97330

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