From: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 19:13:28 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: Document behaviour when matching against multiple regular expressions.
X-Git-Tag: v1.1~17
X-Git-Url: http://git.annexia.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=6d27bfc10be6c01945c73aa4510f1040d3bf7959;hp=329575032af72a3155bcc2640231e603604cd253;p=miniexpect.git

Document behaviour when matching against multiple regular expressions.
---

diff --git a/miniexpect.pod b/miniexpect.pod
index 66ba8c2..b4f0edc 100644
--- a/miniexpect.pod
+++ b/miniexpect.pod
@@ -257,6 +257,29 @@ for EOF or timeout.
 C<regexps[].re>, C<regexps[].extra>, C<regexps[].options>, C<ovector>
 and C<ovecsize> are passed through to the L<pcre_exec(3)> function.
 
+=item *
+
+If multiple regular expressions are passed, then they are checked in
+turn and the I<first> regular expression that matches is returned
+I<even if the match happens later in the input than another regular
+expression>.
+
+For example if the input is C<"hello world"> and you pass the two
+regular expressions:
+
+ regexps[0].re = world
+ regexps[1].re = hello
+
+then the first regular expression (C<"world">) may match and the
+C<"hello"> part of the input may be ignored.
+
+In some cases this can even lead to unpredictable matching.  In the
+case above, if we only happened to read C<"hello wor">, then the
+second regular expression (C<"hello">) I<would> match.
+
+If this is a concern, combine your regular expressions into a single
+one, eg. C<(hello)|(world)>.
+
 =back
 
 =head2 mexp_expect example