Don't understand this match

[Julian Field]

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Richard Thomas wrote:
> I'm not understanding why a certain filename has triggered the "Attempt
> to hide real filename extension" rule. The filename is
>
> Shortcut 29 t.xls
>
> The rule is \.[a-z][a-z0-9]{2,3}\s*\.[a-z0-9]{3}$
>
> As I understand it, that should match a period, followed by an alpha, 
> followed by two or three alphnumerics, any amount of whitespace and 
> then another period then an alphanumeric three character alphanumeric 
> extension all of this being at the end of the filename.
>
> The filename in question has only one period.
>
> Of course, I'm not sure which particular version of regular 
> expressions MailScanner uses (maybe the period is the "match any 
> character" period.
It uses Perl's regular expressions. In all regular expressions that I 
know of, an unescaped "." means match "any single character".
>
> Is there a bug in the regexp? Is this actually a valid match? Is this 
> just a case of "upgrade to the latest"? Possibly I am just wildly out 
> of date :)
This regexp is just fine, it has been there for several years without 
any changes whatsoever. I wrote it carefully and got it right first time.

- -- 
Julian Field
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