Current Perl documentation can be found at perldoc.perl.org.
Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:
Although Perl regular expressions are more powerful than ``mathematical''
regular expressions, because they feature conveniences like backreferences
(\1
and its ilk), they still aren't powerful enough. You still need to use
non-regexp techniques to parse balanced text, such as the text enclosed
between matching parentheses or braces, for example.
An elaborate subroutine (for 7-bit
ASCII only) to pull out balanced and possibly nested
single chars, like `
and '
, {
and }
, or (
and )
can be found in http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/TOMC/scripts/pull_quotes.gz
.
The C::Scan module from CPAN contains such subs for internal usage, but they are undocumented.