awk programming question

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2014, dteske at FreeBSD.org wrote:

>> From: RW [mailto:rwmaillists at googlemail.com]
>> Note that awk supports +, but not newfangled things like *.
>
> With respect to regex, what awk really needs is the quantifier syntax...
>
> * = {0,} = zero or more
> + = {1,} = one or more
> {x,y} = any quantity from x inclusively up to y
> {x,} = any quantity from x or more

I think RW meant to type that awk did not have the newfangled "?" for 
non-greedy matches.