Re: HELP: Sequence (?-...) not recognized at /usr/bin/dpkg-preconfig line 99
On Wed, Nov 24, 1999 at 04:44:24PM +0100, Bruno Boettcher wrote:
> Hello,
>
> when running dselect or apt i invariantly get hte same problem, the whole
> system come to halt with the following error:
> Need to get 0B/576kB of archives. After unpacking 1644kB will be used.
> Sequence (?-...) not recognized at /usr/bin/dpkg-preconfig line 99.
> E: Sub-process dpkg-preconfig --apt returned an error code (255)
> E: Failure running script dpkg-preconfig --apt
>
> the offending line is
>
> if (/^ (?i)(?:Pre-)?Depends(?i-):\s+.*?debconf\s+\(\s*([><=]*)\s+(.*?)\s*\)/)
>
> i am not a perl-expert, but some things seem strange to me about this line:
> .*? this sequence seems very strange to me....
>
> further all this '?' standing around alone.....
>
> so what else is wrong on this line?
>
> I prepended all '?' with '.' without touching the very courious .*? and at
> least apt seems to install and configure the stuff, so even i have not really
> an idea on what i am doing, it can't be so wrong....
>
> but .... did i do the right thing?
these are perl regeps
.* means any string or null string, the longest possible
.*? means any string or null string, the shortest possible
with string 'abcdbcdaba'
'.*d' will catch 'abcdbcd'
'.*?d' will catch 'abcd'
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