Regex is not being as "hungry" as it is supposed to

[suvayu ali]

Hi everyone,

I have a strange problem, recently some of my regexps started becoming
less "hungry" than usual. For example I have a file like this,

 #1 153030 120 = 423988
 #2 152845 181 = 1500234
 #3 155160 247 = 767821
 #4 155160 310 = 11131347
 #5 155160 319 = 13979167

I wanted to remove the 3rd column of numbers along with the = sign. So
I called `query-replace-regexp' with this regexp replacement,

`[0-9]+ = ->'

But this matches the numbers like this,

120 =
1 =
7 =
0 =
9 =

where as I am expecting it to be this,

120 =
181 =
247 =
310 =
319 =

This is just one instance, I have faced similar other cases. I get the
proper expected match only for the first match, for the subsequent
matches the regexp becomes less "hungry".

Is this a consequence of some conflicting settings or a possible bug?
I see this behaviour with GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1, emacs-snapshot from an
Ubuntu Lucid ppa and emacs compiled from source on Fedora 12. (but the
settings are identical for both these setups)

Thanks in advance for any comments/hints about this issue. :)

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.