The shortest possible sequence match with Lua regular expressions

[Joshua Jensen <jjensen@...>]

I ran into this today, and while I tried to explain it away, I have to 
admit I am mildly confused.

Why does the following match the entire string "/dev/myprog/image/xyz/"?

=string.match('/dev/myprog/image/xyz/', '(/.-/)$)

The documentation states that a - (minus) matches the shortest possible 
sequence.

I hadn't given this any thought until today, as I normally would have 
written '.+(/.-/)$'.  That would have yielded the correct result of 
'/xyz/'.   When discussing it with a coworker, though, he raised the 
point that with the final / (slash) anchored at the end of the string, 
the shortest possible matching sequence should be '/xyz/'.

I can buy into that argument.  What are we missing?

Thanks!

Josh