I get the suspicion that the writer doesn't understand the ?, * and + operators...
I checked the manual for PCRE (man pcrepattern), and it says that ? has both the meaning of {0,1} (zero or one repetition), as well as turning * and + into non-greedy variants if directly following them.
Similarly, + usually has the meaning of {1,} (at least once) but can also quantify * and + to prevent backtracking.
For an engine whose semantics differ from PCRE, non-greedy matching or backtracking might not even make sense, if the matching is implemented differently (e.g. using finite automata that don't backtrack).
/x?/ one or none x
/x+/ one or more x
/x*/ none or more x
with variable operators it's more complicated. In
/.+/
the operator is repeated, not the first match as with
/(.)\1*/Also, there are extensions in various implementations that are not in fact a regular, so no finite automata.