perlre.pod

MSYS在windows下模拟了一个类unix的终端

that begin from and end at either alphabets of equal case ([a-e],
[A-E]), or digits ([0-9]).  Anything else is unsafe.  If in doubt,
spell out the character sets in full.

Characters may be specified using a metacharacter syntax much like that
used in C: "\n" matches a newline, "\t" a tab, "\r" a carriage return,
"\f" a form feed, etc.  More generally, \I<nnn>, where I<nnn> is a string
of octal digits, matches the character whose coded character set value 
is I<nnn>.  Similarly, \xI<nn>, where I<nn> are hexadecimal digits, 
matches the character whose numeric value is I<nn>. The expression \cI<x> 
matches the character control-I<x>.  Finally, the "." metacharacter 
matches any character except "\n" (unless you use C</s>).

You can specify a series of alternatives for a pattern using "|" to
separate them, so that C<fee|fie|foe> will match any of "fee", "fie",
or "foe" in the target string (as would C<f(e|i|o)e>).  The
first alternative includes everything from the last pattern delimiter
("(", "[", or the beginning of the pattern) up to the first "|", and
the last alternative contains everything from the last "|" to the next
pattern delimiter.  That's why it's common practice to include
alternatives in parentheses: to minimize confusion about where they
start and end.

Alternatives are tried from left to right, so the first
alternative found for which the entire expression matches, is the one that
is chosen. This means that alternatives are not necessarily greedy. For
example: when matching C<foo|foot> against "barefoot", only the "foo"
part will match, as that is the first alternative tried, and it successfully
matches the target string. (This might not seem important, but it is
important when you are capturing matched text using parentheses.)

Also remember that "|" is interpreted as a literal within square brackets,
so if you write C<[fee|fie|foe]> you're really only matching C<[feio|]>.

Within a pattern, you may designate subpatterns for later reference
by enclosing them in parentheses, and you may refer back to the
I<n>th subpattern later in the pattern using the metacharacter
\I<n>.  Subpatterns are numbered based on the left to right order
of their opening parenthesis.  A backreference matches whatever
actually matched the subpattern in the string being examined, not
the rules for that subpattern.  Therefore, C<(0|0x)\d*\s\1\d*> will
match "0x1234 0x4321", but not "0x1234 01234", because subpattern
1 matched "0x", even though the rule C<0|0x> could potentially match
the leading 0 in the second number.

=head2 Warning on \1 vs $1

Some people get too used to writing things like:

    $pattern =~ s/(\W)/\\\1/g;

This is grandfathered for the RHS of a substitute to avoid shocking the
B<sed> addicts, but it's a dirty habit to get into.  That's because in
PerlThink, the righthand side of a C<s///> is a double-quoted string.  C<\1> in
the usual double-quoted string means a control-A.  The customary Unix
meaning of C<\1> is kludged in for C<s///>.  However, if you get into the habit
of doing that, you get yourself into trouble if you then add an C</e>
modifier.

    s/(\d+)/ \1 + 1 /eg;    	# causes warning under -w

Or if you try to do

    s/(\d+)/\1000/;

You can't disambiguate that by saying C<\{1}000>, whereas you can fix it with
C<${1}000>.  The operation of interpolation should not be confused
with the operation of matching a backreference.  Certainly they mean two
different things on the I<left> side of the C<s///>.

=head2 Repeated patterns matching zero-length substring

B<WARNING>: Difficult material (and prose) ahead.  This section needs a rewrite.

Regular expressions provide a terse and powerful programming language.  As
with most other power tools, power comes together with the ability
to wreak havoc.

A common abuse of this power stems from the ability to make infinite
loops using regular expressions, with something as innocuous as:

    'foo' =~ m{ ( o? )* }x;

The C<o?> can match at the beginning of C<'foo'>, and since the position
in the string is not moved by the match, C<o?> would match again and again
because of the C<*> modifier.  Another common way to create a similar cycle
is with the looping modifier C<//g>:

    @matches = ( 'foo' =~ m{ o? }xg );

or

    print "match: <$&>\n" while 'foo' =~ m{ o? }xg;

or the loop implied by split().

However, long experience has shown that many programming tasks may
be significantly simplified by using repeated subexpressions that
may match zero-length substrings.  Here's a simple example being:

    @chars = split //, $string;		  # // is not magic in split
    ($whitewashed = $string) =~ s/()/ /g; # parens avoid magic s// /

Thus Perl allows such constructs, by I<forcefully breaking
the infinite loop>.  The rules for this are different for lower-level
loops given by the greedy modifiers C<*+{}>, and for higher-level
ones like the C</g> modifier or split() operator.

The lower-level loops are I<interrupted> (that is, the loop is
broken) when Perl detects that a repeated expression matched a
zero-length substring.   Thus

   m{ (?: NON_ZERO_LENGTH | ZERO_LENGTH )* }x;

is made equivalent to 

   m{   (?: NON_ZERO_LENGTH )* 
      | 
        (?: ZERO_LENGTH )? 
    }x;

The higher level-loops preserve an additional state between iterations:
whether the last match was zero-length.  To break the loop, the following 
match after a zero-length match is prohibited to have a length of zero.
This prohibition interacts with backtracking (see L<"Backtracking">), 
and so the I<second best> match is chosen if the I<best> match is of
zero length.

For example:

    $_ = 'bar';
    s/\w??/<$&>/g;

results in C<< <><b><><a><><r><> >>.  At each position of the string the best
match given by non-greedy C<??> is the zero-length match, and the I<second 
best> match is what is matched by C<\w>.  Thus zero-length matches
alternate with one-character-long matches.

Similarly, for repeated C<m/()/g> the second-best match is the match at the 
position one notch further in the string.

The additional state of being I<matched with zero-length> is associated with
the matched string, and is reset by each assignment to pos().
Zero-length matches at the end of the previous match are ignored
during C<split>.

=head2 Combining pieces together

Each of the elementary pieces of regular expressions which were described
before (such as C<ab> or C<\Z>) could match at most one substring
at the given position of the input string.  However, in a typical regular
expression these elementary pieces are combined into more complicated
patterns using combining operators C<ST>, C<S|T>, C<S*> etc
(in these examples C<S> and C<T> are regular subexpressions).

Such combinations can include alternatives, leading to a problem of choice:
if we match a regular expression C<a|ab> against C<"abc">, will it match
substring C<"a"> or C<"ab">?  One way to describe which substring is
actually matched is the concept of backtracking (see L<"Backtracking">).
However, this description is too low-level and makes you think
in terms of a particular implementation.

Another description starts with notions of "better"/"worse".  All the
substrings which may be matched by the given regular expression can be
sorted from the "best" match to the "worst" match, and it is the "best"
match which is chosen.  This substitutes the question of "what is chosen?"
by the question of "which matches are better, and which are worse?".

Again, for elementary pieces there is no such question, since at most
one match at a given position is possible.  This section describes the
notion of better/worse for combining operators.  In the description
below C<S> and C<T> are regular subexpressions.

=over 4

=item C<ST>

Consider two possible matches, C<AB> and C<A'B'>, C<A> and C<A'> are
substrings which can be matched by C<S>, C<B> and C<B'> are substrings
which can be matched by C<T>. 

If C<A> is better match for C<S> than C<A'>, C<AB> is a better
match than C<A'B'>.

If C<A> and C<A'> coincide: C<AB> is a better match than C<AB'> if
C<B> is better match for C<T> than C<B'>.

=item C<S|T>

When C<S> can match, it is a better match than when only C<T> can match.

Ordering of two matches for C<S> is the same as for C<S>.  Similar for
two matches for C<T>.

=item C<S{REPEAT_COUNT}>

Matches as C<SSS...S> (repeated as many times as necessary).

=item C<S{min,max}>

Matches as C<S{max}|S{max-1}|...|S{min+1}|S{min}>.

=item C<S{min,max}?>

Matches as C<S{min}|S{min+1}|...|S{max-1}|S{max}>.

=item C<S?>, C<S*>, C<S+>

Same as C<S{0,1}>, C<S{0,BIG_NUMBER}>, C<S{1,BIG_NUMBER}> respectively.

=item C<S??>, C<S*?>, C<S+?>

Same as C<S{0,1}?>, C<S{0,BIG_NUMBER}?>, C<S{1,BIG_NUMBER}?> respectively.

=item C<< (?>S) >>

Matches the best match for C<S> and only that.

=item C<(?=S)>, C<(?<=S)>

Only the best match for C<S> is considered.  (This is important only if
C<S> has capturing parentheses, and backreferences are used somewhere
else in the whole regular expression.)

=item C<(?!S)>, C<(?<!S)>

For this grouping operator there is no need to describe the ordering, since
only whether or not C<S> can match is important.

=item C<(??{ EXPR })>

The ordering is the same as for the regular expression which is
the result of EXPR.

=item C<(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)>

Recall that which of C<yes-pattern> or C<no-pattern> actually matches is
already determined.  The ordering of the matches is the same as for the
chosen subexpression.

=back

The above recipes describe the ordering of matches I<at a given position>.
One more rule is needed to understand how a match is determined for the
whole regular expression: a match at an earlier position is always better
than a match at a later position.

=head2 Creating custom RE engines

Overloaded constants (see L<overload>) provide a simple way to extend
the functionality of the RE engine.

Suppose that we want to enable a new RE escape-sequence C<\Y|> which
matches at boundary between white-space characters and non-whitespace
characters.  Note that C<(?=\S)(?<!\S)|(?!\S)(?<=\S)> matches exactly
at these positions, so we want to have each C<\Y|> in the place of the
more complicated version.  We can create a module C<customre> to do
this:

    package customre;
    use overload;

    sub import {
      shift;
      die "No argument to customre::import allowed" if @_;
      overload::constant 'qr' => \&convert;
    }

    sub invalid { die "/$_[0]/: invalid escape '\\$_[1]'"}

    my %rules = ( '\\' => '\\', 
		  'Y|' => qr/(?=\S)(?<!\S)|(?!\S)(?<=\S)/ );
    sub convert {
      my $re = shift;
      $re =~ s{ 
                \\ ( \\ | Y . )
              }
              { $rules{$1} or invalid($re,$1) }sgex; 
      return $re;
    }

Now C<use customre> enables the new escape in constant regular
expressions, i.e., those without any runtime variable interpolations.
As documented in L<overload>, this conversion will work only over
literal parts of regular expressions.  For C<\Y|$re\Y|> the variable
part of this regular expression needs to be converted explicitly
(but only if the special meaning of C<\Y|> should be enabled inside $re):

    use customre;
    $re = <>;
    chomp $re;
    $re = customre::convert $re;
    /\Y|$re\Y|/;

=head1 BUGS

This document varies from difficult to understand to completely
and utterly opaque.  The wandering prose riddled with jargon is
hard to fathom in several places.

This document needs a rewrite that separates the tutorial content
from the reference content.

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.

L<perlop/"Gory details of parsing quoted constructs">.

L<perlfaq6>.

L<perlfunc/pos>.

L<perllocale>.

L<perlebcdic>.

I<Mastering Regular Expressions> by Jeffrey Friedl, published
by O'Reilly and Associates.