> but IIRC the standard ivory tower regular expressions have grouping, > alternation, and closure, or in re terms, () | and *. Much of perl's > re forms can be created from those (e.g. x+ is the same as xx*). > The original thing that was outside the official scope was backreferences ... > However, the ivory tower definitions are useful mostly for analysing > complexity. Sometimes you need a more powerful mechanism
Correct. Hence we have something more useful which needs a new name, at least in theory. Concise theoretical definition unmuddied by well meaning wikignomes at the always useful MathWorld ... http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RegularExpression.html _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm