An aspect of the syntax is confusing me here. I would have assumed that the expression 'x+?' would be parsed as '((x)+)?', ie. 'x*'. However, it seems the parse

An aspect of the syntax is confusing me here. I would have assumed that the expression 'x+?' would be parsed as '((x)+)?', ie. 'x*'. However, it seems the parser special-cases this as (x)(+?) instead, and interprets that as a non-greedy operator. Isn't this horribly inconsistent?