Java regex look-behind group does not have obvious maximum length error

Question

I know that java regex does not support varying length look-behinds, and that the following should cause an error

(?<=(not exceeding|no((\\\\w|\\\\s)*)mor         


        

Answer 1

Below are some test cases (I removed the redundant parens, as mentioned by @Pshemo). It only fails where the lookbehind contains a sub-alternation. The error is

Look-behind group does not have an obvious maximum length near index 45

"Obvious" being the keyword here.

   import  java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Test  {
   public static final void main(String[] ignored)  {
      test("(?<=not exceeding|no)xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|NOT EXCEEDING)xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|x{13})xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|x{12}x)xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|(x|y){12}x)xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|no(\\w|\\s){2,30}more than)xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|no(\\w|\\s){0,2}more than)xxxx");
      test("(?<=not exceeding|no(\\w|\\s){2}more than)xxxx");
   }
      private static final void test(String regex)  {
         System.out.print("testing \"" + regex + "\"...");
         try  {
            Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);
            System.out.println("Success");
         }  catch(Exception x)  {
            System.out.println(x);
         }

      }
}

Output:

testing "(?<=not exceeding|no)xxxx"...Success
testing "(?<=not exceeding|NOT EXCEEDING)xxxx"...Success
testing "(?<=not exceeding|x{13})xxxx"...Success
testing "(?<=not exceeding|x{12}x)xxxx"...Success
testing "(?<=not exceeding|(x|y){12}x)xxxx"...java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Look-behind group does not
 have an obvious maximum length near index 27
(?<=not exceeding|(x|y){12}x)xxxx
                           ^
testing "(?<=not exceeding|no(\w|\s){2,30}more than)xxxx"...java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Look-behind
group does not have an obvious maximum length near index 41
(?<=not exceeding|no(\w|\s){2,30}more than)xxxx
                                         ^
testing "(?<=not exceeding|no(\w|\s){0,2}more than)xxxx"...java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Look-behind g
roup does not have an obvious maximum length near index 40
(?<=not exceeding|no(\w|\s){0,2}more than)xxxx
                                        ^
testing "(?<=not exceeding|no(\w|\s){2}more than)xxxx"...java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Look-behind gro
up does not have an obvious maximum length near index 38
(?<=not exceeding|no(\w|\s){2}more than)xxxx
                                      ^