The regular expression library will match the first possible matching string, if more than one string starting at a given location can match then it matches the longest possible string, unless the flag match_any is set, in which case the first match encountered is returned. Use of the match_any option can reduce the time taken to find the match - but is only useful if the user is less concerned about what matched - for example it would not be suitable for search and replace operations. In cases where there are multiple possible matches all starting at the same location, and all of the same length, then the match chosen is the one with the longest first sub-expression, if that is the same for two or more matches, then the second sub-expression will be examined and so on.
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