[FWP] Comparing Regular Expressions

[D@i-works.com]

I don't know if I've somehow been thrown off, or everyone just has
a Perl hangover. And I am not even sure if this is just another
do-my-homework question, but:

Is there a way to "compare" regular expressions? For instance,
q/.*/ is less than q/a.*/ because whatever matches the latter
also matches the former. Is there an easy way to do such a
comparison?

That's perhaps intractable, but at least well defined. Now
a more interesting question: if a string is known to match
two REs, then is there a sense in which one of the matches
is "better", i.e. more specialized? How do you go about
defining it? (If a string matches q/a.*/ that's intuitively
more information than q/.*/.)

I'll just go with length of the RE, sense be damned. But
better ideas are appreciated,

Tushar


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