Let's say we have a regex "start:(?: ([0-9]{1,2}))? ([0-9].*)". It will match std::string string1 = "start: 01 0ab"; and std::string string2 = "start: 0ab"; We can also get the 2 matched string respectively. I try to use boost::spirit::qi parser to parse string2 but it couldn't match. qi::rule<std::string::const_iterator, std::string()> rule1 = qi::repeat(1,2)[qi::digit]; qi::rule<std::string::const_iterator, std::string()> rule2 = qi::digit >> *qi::char_; std::vector<std::string> attr; auto it_begin = string2.begin(); auto it_end = string2.end(); if (qi::parse( it_begin, it_end, qi::lit("start:") >> -(qi::lit(" ") >> rule1) >> qi::lit(" ") >> rule2 >> qi::eoi, attr)) std::cout<<"match"<<std::endl; else std::cout<<"not match"<<std::endl; We can of course use a look-ahead operator to check what's behind rule1, but is there a more generic approach to implement regex operator '?' ? Thanks!