Re: quick regex

[mike808 <mike808@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Friday 09 August 2002 05:13 pm, you wrote:
> time to learn regex me thinks

Be aware that what Apache calls "regexes" is NOT the same as "Perl regexes" or 
"egrep regexes", or "fileglobbing regexes", or "sed/ex" regexes.

Apache uses a home rolled regex parser/engine.

I know this because I could not find a single piece of documentation on 
*exactly* what the regex syntax was. I found lots of references to things 
like "similar to regular expressions defined elsewhere", without really 
spelling out where, exactly "elsewhere" was, nor where the boundary between 
"similar" and "different" was.

So, I went and hunted down the source. And found out it's a hand-job of a 
regex. It appears to be written such that it passes a bunch of regex tests.
So, if your regex doesn't look like the tests do, you are SOL.
BTW, there are odd limits like only 9 subexpressions.

I am hopeful that this sorely lacking documentation oversight has been 
addressed in 2.0.

It's a real PITA when documentation does a bunch of hand-waving and referring 
to events offstage, like that clears things up.

Mike808/
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