Update: I tested it out a little more here. https://github.com/oilshell/blog-code/blob/master/regular-languages/greedy.sh#L61 https://github.com/oilshell/blog-

Update: I tested it out a little more here. https://github.com/oilshell/blog-code/blob/master/regular-languages/greedy.sh#L61 https://github.com/oilshell/blog-code/blob/master/regular-la... Basically everything you want with regard to greedy-nongreedy can be done through automata-based engines. They jump through a lot of hoops to make them work! However I would also argue that when you're using them, you're doing it as a performance hack in a Perl-style regex engine. In an automata-based engine, you can just write /x*/ /(x*)/ and it's what you want, and it runs fast.