From: DavidMarcus@MindSpring.com (David Marcus)
Jorj Strumolo  wrote on Thu, 05 Feb 1998 23:34:00 GMT:
> Recently, as part of a discussion of illegal newsgroup
> names, I wanted to do a search thru a plain text version
> of the 22,000 newsgroups on this server, trying to find
> groups with names over the 14-character unit limit,
> such as "alt.conspiracy.new-world-order" where
> "new-world-order" has 15 characters after the last dot.
>
> I could do a search for   \.[0-9a-z_+-]#.*      , that is,
>
> a dot followed by *1* or more occurrences of 0-9, a-z, _ or +
> or -, optionally followed by a '.' if the string wasn't the last
> part of the name.  I couldn't find a way to limit it to *15*
> or more occurrences of the first range.  Is there one?
I thought that what you need is "[0-9a-z_+-]++++++++++++++"  -- at least, if 

typed 14 + signs, that is -- but it gave me "incomplete closure". 
So, I tried constructs like "{{[0-9a-z_+-]+}+}+\." ... which found any single
character (regardless of presence of . following it).
Strange stuff.... you have a can of worms & I look forward to the answer.
Anyone else?
I don't think that the \. is necessary (and having it precludes finding new
groups that start with >14 character string).
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