Re: Regex backreference without capture (?&NAME) NamedCapture

[beech]

Hi

? So you want  @x = qw( first third ) ;

This "works"

dd( 'bogus firstblahjokeblahthird bogus' =~ m/
(first)
(?&patblah)
.*?
(?&patblah)
(third)
(?(DEFINE)
    (?<patblah>blah)
)
/sx );
__END__
("first", "third", undef)

The undef comes from the named capture  (?<patblah>blah) which takes up slot $3 in this pattern, which is why (?(DEFINE) is placed at the end

[QM]

Thanks.

But does this do backreferences? I see it matches the same pattern, but that's not the same as a backreference.

But thanks, that makes me think about the problem differently.

Edited to add:
------------------
I'm considering using named capture groups, where there's a need to have a well-defined return value. Which is something PCRE has, and some people (!) can't live without, apparently.

[rsFalse]

E.g. the input is "bogus firstblAHj?keblOWthird bogus", and pattern is 'bl..', then it matches both, but OP would like to match only the same :)