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1. Jens Finkhäuser 🌻 (jens@social.finkhaeuser.de)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jan-2022 20:10:33 UTC Jens Finkhäuser 🌻

   • Stevan

   @withaveeay @kensanata Well, after reading this, I have to confess that in 25+ years, I have never used backreferences in a regex.

   • Matthew "Smiffy" Smith (grumpysmiffy@aus.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jan-2022 20:10:31 UTC Matthew "Smiffy" Smith

     in reply to

     • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅
     • Stevan

     @clacke @kensanata @withaveeay @jens I've been using them what feels like forever, but never seen any theory, so that's my reading for this evening.

   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jan-2022 20:10:32 UTC Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

     in reply to

     • Stevan
     Speaking from an informatics point of view, regular expressions don't have back references.
     
     In practice, of course, most practical implementations of regex-likes have them as an extension.
     
     I use back references more than you ... maybe once every two years.
   • Zack Weinberg (zwol@hackers.town)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jan-2022 02:06:11 UTC Zack Weinberg

     in reply to

     • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅
     • Stevan

     @clacke @kensanata @withaveeay @jens I think the most frequent thing I use back references for is /(["']).*?\1/ which is really just a less repetitive way to type /".*?"|'.*?'/ (also if I need to capture the contents of the string it’s the same match group either way) but I have no idea whether common regex engines can see that.

   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jan-2022 02:06:11 UTC Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

     in reply to

     • Zack Weinberg
     • Stevan
     @zwol Oh yeah, that's an interesting question, how much optimization an engine might be able to do.
     
     @kensanata @withaveeay @jens