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NAME

       perlre - Perl regular expressions

DESCRIPTION

       This page describes the syntax of regular expressions in Perl.

       If you haven’t used regular expressions before, a quick-start
       introduction is available in perlrequick, and a longer tutorial
       introduction is available in perlretut.

       For reference on how regular expressions are used in matching
       operations, plus various examples of the same, see discussions of
       "m//", "s///", "qr//" and "??" in "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in
       perlop.

   Modifiers
       Matching operations can have various modifiers.  Modifiers that relate
       to the interpretation of the regular expression inside are listed
       below.  Modifiers that alter the way a regular expression is used by
       Perl are detailed in "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop and "Gory
       details of parsing quoted constructs" in perlop.

       m   Treat string as multiple lines.  That is, change "^" and "$" from
           matching the start or end of the string to matching the start or
           end of any line anywhere within the string.

       s   Treat string as single line.  That is, change "." to match any
           character whatsoever, even a newline, which normally it would not
           match.

           Used together, as /ms, they let the "." match any character
           whatsoever, while still allowing "^" and "$" to match,
           respectively, just after and just before newlines within the
           string.

       i   Do case-insensitive pattern matching.

           If "use locale" is in effect, the case map is taken from the
           current locale.  See perllocale.

       x   Extend your pattern’s legibility by permitting whitespace and
           comments.

       p   Preserve the string matched such that ${^PREMATCH}, {$^MATCH}, and
           ${^POSTMATCH} are available for use after matching.

       g and c
           Global matching, and keep the Current position after failed
           matching.  Unlike i, m, s and x, these two flags affect the way the
           regex is used rather than the regex itself. See "Using regular
           expressions in Perl" in perlretut for further explanation of the g
           and c modifiers.

       These are usually written as "the "/x" modifier", even though the
       delimiter in question might not really be a slash.  Any of these
       modifiers may also be embedded within the regular expression itself
       using the "(?...)" construct.  See below.

       The "/x" modifier itself needs a little more explanation.  It tells the
       regular expression parser to ignore whitespace that is neither
       backslashed nor within a character class.  You can use this to break up
       your regular expression into (slightly) more readable parts.  The "#"
       character is also treated as a metacharacter introducing a comment,
       just as in ordinary Perl code.  This also means that if you want real
       whitespace or "#" characters in the pattern (outside a character class,
       where they are unaffected by "/x"), then you’ll either have to escape
       them (using backslashes or "\Q...\E") or encode them using octal or hex
       escapes.  Taken together, these features go a long way towards making
       Perl’s regular expressions more readable.  Note that you have to be
       careful not to include the pattern delimiter in the comment--perl has
       no way of knowing you did not intend to close the pattern early.  See
       the C-comment deletion code in perlop.  Also note that anything inside
       a "\Q...\E" stays unaffected by "/x".

   Regular Expressions
       Metacharacters

       The patterns used in Perl pattern matching evolved from those supplied
       in the Version 8 regex routines.  (The routines are derived (distantly)
       from Henry Spencer’s freely redistributable reimplementation of the V8
       routines.)  See "Version 8 Regular Expressions" for details.

       In particular the following metacharacters have their standard
       egrep-ish meanings:

           \   Quote the next metacharacter
           ^   Match the beginning of the line
           .   Match any character (except newline)
           $   Match the end of the line (or before newline at the end)
           |   Alternation
           ()  Grouping
           []  Character class

       By default, the "^" character is guaranteed to match only the beginning
       of the string, the "$" character only the end (or before the newline at
       the end), and Perl does certain optimizations with the assumption that
       the string contains only one line.  Embedded newlines will not be
       matched by "^" or "$".  You may, however, wish to treat a string as a
       multi-line buffer, such that the "^" will match after any newline
       within the string (except if the newline is the last character in the
       string), and "$" will match before any newline.  At the cost of a
       little more overhead, you can do this by using the /m modifier on the
       pattern match operator.  (Older programs did this by setting $*, but
       this practice has been removed in perl 5.9.)

       To simplify multi-line substitutions, the "." character never matches a
       newline unless you use the "/s" modifier, which in effect tells Perl to
       pretend the string is a single line--even if it isn’t.

       Quantifiers

       The following standard quantifiers are recognized:

           *      Match 0 or more times
           +      Match 1 or more times
           ?      Match 1 or 0 times
           {n}    Match exactly n times
           {n,}   Match at least n times
           {n,m}  Match at least n but not more than m times

       (If a curly bracket occurs in any other context, it is treated as a
       regular character.  In particular, the lower bound is not optional.)
       The "*" quantifier is equivalent to "{0,}", the "+" quantifier to
       "{1,}", and the "?" quantifier to "{0,1}".  n and m are limited to
       integral values less than a preset limit defined when perl is built.
       This is usually 32766 on the most common platforms.  The actual limit
       can be seen in the error message generated by code such as this:

           $_ **= $_ , / {$_} / for 2 .. 42;

       By default, a quantified subpattern is "greedy", that is, it will match
       as many times as possible (given a particular starting location) while
       still allowing the rest of the pattern to match.  If you want it to
       match the minimum number of times possible, follow the quantifier with
       a "?".  Note that the meanings don’t change, just the "greediness":

           *?     Match 0 or more times, not greedily
           +?     Match 1 or more times, not greedily
           ??     Match 0 or 1 time, not greedily
           {n}?   Match exactly n times, not greedily
           {n,}?  Match at least n times, not greedily
           {n,m}? Match at least n but not more than m times, not greedily

       By default, when a quantified subpattern does not allow the rest of the
       overall pattern to match, Perl will backtrack. However, this behaviour
       is sometimes undesirable. Thus Perl provides the "possessive"
       quantifier form as well.

           *+     Match 0 or more times and give nothing back
           ++     Match 1 or more times and give nothing back
           ?+     Match 0 or 1 time and give nothing back
           {n}+   Match exactly n times and give nothing back (redundant)
           {n,}+  Match at least n times and give nothing back
           {n,m}+ Match at least n but not more than m times and give nothing back

       For instance,

          'aaaa' =~ /a++a/

       will never match, as the "a++" will gobble up all the "a"’s in the
       string and won’t leave any for the remaining part of the pattern. This
       feature can be extremely useful to give perl hints about where it
       shouldn’t backtrack. For instance, the typical "match a double-quoted
       string" problem can be most efficiently performed when written as:

          /"(?:[^"\\]++|\\.)*+"/

       as we know that if the final quote does not match, backtracking will
       not help. See the independent subexpression "(?>...)" for more details;
       possessive quantifiers are just syntactic sugar for that construct. For
       instance the above example could also be written as follows:

          /"(?>(?:(?>[^"\\]+)|\\.)*)"/

       Escape sequences

       Because patterns are processed as double quoted strings, the following
       also work:

           \t          tab                   (HT, TAB)
           \n          newline               (LF, NL)
           \r          return                (CR)
           \f          form feed             (FF)
           \a          alarm (bell)          (BEL)
           \e          escape (think troff)  (ESC)
           \033        octal char            (example: ESC)
           \x1B        hex char              (example: ESC)
           \x{263a}    long hex char         (example: Unicode SMILEY)
           \cK         control char          (example: VT)
           \N{name}    named Unicode character
           \l          lowercase next char (think vi)
           \u          uppercase next char (think vi)
           \L          lowercase till \E (think vi)
           \U          uppercase till \E (think vi)
           \E          end case modification (think vi)
           \Q          quote (disable) pattern metacharacters till \E

       If "use locale" is in effect, the case map used by "\l", "\L", "\u" and
       "\U" is taken from the current locale.  See perllocale.  For
       documentation of "\N{name}", see charnames.

       You cannot include a literal "$" or "@" within a "\Q" sequence.  An
       unescaped "$" or "@" interpolates the corresponding variable, while
       escaping will cause the literal string "\$" to be matched.  You’ll need
       to write something like "m/\Quser\E\@\Qhost/".

       Character Classes and other Special Escapes

       In addition, Perl defines the following:

           \w       Match a "word" character (alphanumeric plus "_")
           \W       Match a non-"word" character
           \s       Match a whitespace character
           \S       Match a non-whitespace character
           \d       Match a digit character
           \D       Match a non-digit character
           \pP      Match P, named property.  Use \p{Prop} for longer names.
           \PP      Match non-P
           \X       Match eXtended Unicode "combining character sequence",
                    equivalent to (?>\PM\pM*)
           \C       Match a single C char (octet) even under Unicode.
                    NOTE: breaks up characters into their UTF-8 bytes,
                    so you may end up with malformed pieces of UTF-8.
                    Unsupported in lookbehind.
           \1       Backreference to a specific group.
                    '1' may actually be any positive integer.
           \g1      Backreference to a specific or previous group,
           \g{-1}   number may be negative indicating a previous buffer and may
                    optionally be wrapped in curly brackets for safer parsing.
           \g{name} Named backreference
           \k<name> Named backreference
           \K       Keep the stuff left of the \K, don't include it in $&
           \v       Vertical whitespace
           \V       Not vertical whitespace
           \h       Horizontal whitespace
           \H       Not horizontal whitespace
           \R       Linebreak

       A "\w" matches a single alphanumeric character (an alphabetic
       character, or a decimal digit) or "_", not a whole word.  Use "\w+" to
       match a string of Perl-identifier characters (which isn’t the same as
       matching an English word).  If "use locale" is in effect, the list of
       alphabetic characters generated by "\w" is taken from the current
       locale.  See perllocale.  You may use "\w", "\W", "\s", "\S", "\d", and
       "\D" within character classes, but they aren’t usable as either end of
       a range. If any of them precedes or follows a "-", the "-" is
       understood literally. If Unicode is in effect, "\s" matches also
       "\x{85}", "\x{2028}", and "\x{2029}". See perlunicode for more details
       about "\pP", "\PP", "\X" and the possibility of defining your own "\p"
       and "\P" properties, and perluniintro about Unicode in general.

       "\R" will atomically match a linebreak, including the network line-
       ending "\x0D\x0A".  Specifically,  is exactly equivalent to

         (?>\x0D\x0A?|[\x0A-\x0C\x85\x{2028}\x{2029}])

       Note: "\R" has no special meaning inside of a character class; use "\v"
       instead (vertical whitespace).

       The POSIX character class syntax

           [:class:]

       is also available.  Note that the "[" and "]" brackets are literal;
       they must always be used within a character class expression.

           # this is correct:
           $string =~ /[[:alpha:]]/;

           # this is not, and will generate a warning:
           $string =~ /[:alpha:]/;

       The available classes and their backslash equivalents (if available)
       are as follows:

           alpha
           alnum
           ascii
           blank               [1]
           cntrl
           digit       \d
           graph
           lower
           print
           punct
           space       \s      [2]
           upper
           word        \w      [3]
           xdigit

       [1] A GNU extension equivalent to "[ \t]", "all horizontal whitespace".

       [2] Not exactly equivalent to "\s" since the "[[:space:]]" includes
           also the (very rare) "vertical tabulator", "\cK" or chr(11) in
           ASCII.

       [3] A Perl extension, see above.

       For example use "[:upper:]" to match all the uppercase characters.
       Note that the "[]" are part of the "[::]" construct, not part of the
       whole character class.  For example:

           [01[:alpha:]%]

       matches zero, one, any alphabetic character, and the percent sign.

       The following equivalences to Unicode \p{} constructs and equivalent
       backslash character classes (if available), will hold:

           [[:...:]]   \p{...}         backslash

           alpha       IsAlpha
           alnum       IsAlnum
           ascii       IsASCII
           blank
           cntrl       IsCntrl
           digit       IsDigit        \d
           graph       IsGraph
           lower       IsLower
           print       IsPrint         (but see [2] below)
           punct       IsPunct         (but see [3] below)
           space       IsSpace
                       IsSpacePerl    \s
           upper       IsUpper
           word        IsWord         \w
           xdigit      IsXDigit

       For example "[[:lower:]]" and "\p{IsLower}" are equivalent.

       However, the equivalence between "[[:xxxxx:]]" and "\p{IsXxxxx}" is not
       exact.

       [1] If the "utf8" pragma is not used but the "locale" pragma is, the
           classes correlate with the usual isalpha(3) interface (except for
           "word" and "blank").

           But if the "locale" or "encoding" pragmas are not used and the
           string is not "utf8", then "[[:xxxxx:]]" (and "\w", etc.)  will not
           match characters 0x80-0xff; whereas "\p{IsXxxxx}" will force the
           string to "utf8" and can match these characters (as Unicode).

       [2] "\p{IsPrint}" matches characters 0x09-0x0d but "[[:print:]]" does
           not.

       [3] "[[:punct::]]" matches the following but "\p{IsPunct}" does not,
           because they are classed as symbols (not punctuation) in Unicode.

           "$" Currency symbol

           "+" "<" "=" ">" "|" "~"
               Mathematical symbols

           "^" "`"
               Modifier symbols (accents)

       The other named classes are:

       cntrl
           Any control character.  Usually characters that don’t produce
           output as such but instead control the terminal somehow: for
           example newline and backspace are control characters.  All
           characters with ord() less than 32 are usually classified as
           control characters (assuming ASCII, the ISO Latin character sets,
           and Unicode), as is the character with the ord() value of 127
           ("DEL").

       graph
           Any alphanumeric or punctuation (special) character.

       print
           Any alphanumeric or punctuation (special) character or the space
           character.

       punct
           Any punctuation (special) character.

       xdigit
           Any hexadecimal digit.  Though this may feel silly ([0-9A-Fa-f]
           would work just fine) it is included for completeness.

       You can negate the [::] character classes by prefixing the class name
       with a ’^’. This is a Perl extension.  For example:

           POSIX         traditional  Unicode

           [[:^digit:]]    \D         \P{IsDigit}
           [[:^space:]]    \S         \P{IsSpace}
           [[:^word:]]     \W         \P{IsWord}

       Perl respects the POSIX standard in that POSIX character classes are
       only supported within a character class.  The POSIX character classes
       [.cc.] and [=cc=] are recognized but not supported and trying to use
       them will cause an error.

       Assertions

       Perl defines the following zero-width assertions:

           \b  Match a word boundary
           \B  Match except at a word boundary
           \A  Match only at beginning of string
           \Z  Match only at end of string, or before newline at the end
           \z  Match only at end of string
           \G  Match only at pos() (e.g. at the end-of-match position
               of prior m//g)

       A word boundary ("\b") is a spot between two characters that has a "\w"
       on one side of it and a "\W" on the other side of it (in either order),
       counting the imaginary characters off the beginning and end of the
       string as matching a "\W".  (Within character classes "\b" represents
       backspace rather than a word boundary, just as it normally does in any
       double-quoted string.)  The "\A" and "\Z" are just like "^" and "$",
       except that they won’t match multiple times when the "/m" modifier is
       used, while "^" and "$" will match at every internal line boundary.  To
       match the actual end of the string and not ignore an optional trailing
       newline, use "\z".

       The "\G" assertion can be used to chain global matches (using "m//g"),
       as described in "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.  It is also
       useful when writing "lex"-like scanners, when you have several patterns
       that you want to match against consequent substrings of your string,
       see the previous reference.  The actual location where "\G" will match
       can also be influenced by using "pos()" as an lvalue: see "pos" in
       perlfunc. Note that the rule for zero-length matches is modified
       somewhat, in that contents to the left of "\G" is not counted when
       determining the length of the match. Thus the following will not match
       forever:

           $str = 'ABC';
           pos($str) = 1;
           while (/.\G/g) {
               print $&;
           }

       It will print ’A’ and then terminate, as it considers the match to be
       zero-width, and thus will not match at the same position twice in a
       row.

       It is worth noting that "\G" improperly used can result in an infinite
       loop. Take care when using patterns that include "\G" in an
       alternation.

       Capture buffers

       The bracketing construct "( ... )" creates capture buffers. To refer to
       the current contents of a buffer later on, within the same pattern, use
       \1 for the first, \2 for the second, and so on.  Outside the match use
       "$" instead of "\".  (The \<digit> notation works in certain
       circumstances outside the match.  See the warning below about \1 vs $1
       for details.)  Referring back to another part of the match is called a
       backreference.

       There is no limit to the number of captured substrings that you may
       use.  However Perl also uses \10, \11, etc. as aliases for \010, \011,
       etc.  (Recall that 0 means octal, so \011 is the character at number 9
       in your coded character set; which would be the 10th character, a
       horizontal tab under ASCII.)  Perl resolves this ambiguity by
       interpreting \10 as a backreference only if at least 10 left
       parentheses have opened before it.  Likewise \11 is a backreference
       only if at least 11 left parentheses have opened before it.  And so on.
       \1 through \9 are always interpreted as backreferences.

       In order to provide a safer and easier way to construct patterns using
       backreferences, Perl provides the "\g{N}" notation (starting with perl
       5.10.0). The curly brackets are optional, however omitting them is less
       safe as the meaning of the pattern can be changed by text (such as
       digits) following it. When N is a positive integer the "\g{N}" notation
       is exactly equivalent to using normal backreferences. When N is a
       negative integer then it is a relative backreference referring to the
       previous N’th capturing group. When the bracket form is used and N is
       not an integer, it is treated as a reference to a named buffer.

       Thus "\g{-1}" refers to the last buffer, "\g{-2}" refers to the buffer
       before that. For example:

               /
                (Y)            # buffer 1
                (              # buffer 2
                   (X)         # buffer 3
                   \g{-1}      # backref to buffer 3
                   \g{-3}      # backref to buffer 1
                )
               /x

       and would match the same as "/(Y) ( (X) \3 \1 )/x".

       Additionally, as of Perl 5.10.0 you may use named capture buffers and
       named backreferences. The notation is "(?<name>...)" to declare and
       "\k<name>" to reference. You may also use apostrophes instead of angle
       brackets to delimit the name; and you may use the bracketed "\g{name}"
       backreference syntax.  It’s possible to refer to a named capture buffer
       by absolute and relative number as well.  Outside the pattern, a named
       capture buffer is available via the "%+" hash.  When different buffers
       within the same pattern have the same name, $+{name} and "\k<name>"
       refer to the leftmost defined group. (Thus it’s possible to do things
       with named capture buffers that would otherwise require "(??{})" code
       to accomplish.)

       Examples:

           s/^([^ ]*) *([^ ]*)/$2 $1/;     # swap first two words

           /(.)\1/                         # find first doubled char
                and print "'$1' is the first doubled character\n";

           /(?<char>.)\k<char>/            # ... a different way
                and print "'$+{char}' is the first doubled character\n";

           /(?'char'.)\1/                  # ... mix and match
                and print "'$1' is the first doubled character\n";

           if (/Time: (..):(..):(..)/) {   # parse out values
               $hours = $1;
               $minutes = $2;
               $seconds = $3;
           }

       Several special variables also refer back to portions of the previous
       match.  $+ returns whatever the last bracket match matched.  $& returns
       the entire matched string.  (At one point $0 did also, but now it
       returns the name of the program.)  "$`" returns everything before the
       matched string.  "$'" returns everything after the matched string. And
       $^N contains whatever was matched by the most-recently closed group
       (submatch). $^N can be used in extended patterns (see below), for
       example to assign a submatch to a variable.

       The numbered match variables ($1, $2, $3, etc.) and the related
       punctuation set ($+, $&, "$`", "$'", and $^N) are all dynamically
       scoped until the end of the enclosing block or until the next
       successful match, whichever comes first.  (See "Compound Statements" in
       perlsyn.)

       NOTE: Failed matches in Perl do not reset the match variables, which
       makes it easier to write code that tests for a series of more specific
       cases and remembers the best match.

       WARNING: Once Perl sees that you need one of $&, "$`", or "$'" anywhere
       in the program, it has to provide them for every pattern match.  This
       may substantially slow your program.  Perl uses the same mechanism to
       produce $1, $2, etc, so you also pay a price for each pattern that
       contains capturing parentheses.  (To avoid this cost while retaining
       the grouping behaviour, use the extended regular expression "(?: ... )"
       instead.)  But if you never use $&, "$`" or "$'", then patterns without
       capturing parentheses will not be penalized.  So avoid $&, "$'", and
       "$`" if you can, but if you can’t (and some algorithms really
       appreciate them), once you’ve used them once, use them at will, because
       you’ve already paid the price.  As of 5.005, $& is not so costly as the
       other two.

       As a workaround for this problem, Perl 5.10.0 introduces
       "${^PREMATCH}", "${^MATCH}" and "${^POSTMATCH}", which are equivalent
       to "$`", $& and "$'", except that they are only guaranteed to be
       defined after a successful match that was executed with the "/p"
       (preserve) modifier.  The use of these variables incurs no global
       performance penalty, unlike their punctuation char equivalents, however
       at the trade-off that you have to tell perl when you want to use them.

       Backslashed metacharacters in Perl are alphanumeric, such as "\b",
       "\w", "\n".  Unlike some other regular expression languages, there are
       no backslashed symbols that aren’t alphanumeric.  So anything that
       looks like \\, \(, \), \<, \>, \{, or \} is always interpreted as a
       literal character, not a metacharacter.  This was once used in a common
       idiom to disable or quote the special meanings of regular expression
       metacharacters in a string that you want to use for a pattern. Simply
       quote all non-"word" characters:

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

       (If "use locale" is set, then this depends on the current locale.)
       Today it is more common to use the quotemeta() function or the "\Q"
       metaquoting escape sequence to disable all metacharacters’ special
       meanings like this:

           /$unquoted\Q$quoted\E$unquoted/

       Beware that if you put literal backslashes (those not inside
       interpolated variables) between "\Q" and "\E", double-quotish backslash
       interpolation may lead to confusing results.  If you need to use
       literal backslashes within "\Q...\E", consult "Gory details of parsing
       quoted constructs" in perlop.

   Extended Patterns
       Perl also defines a consistent extension syntax for features not found
       in standard tools like awk and lex.  The syntax is a pair of
       parentheses with a question mark as the first thing within the
       parentheses.  The character after the question mark indicates the
       extension.

       The stability of these extensions varies widely.  Some have been part
       of the core language for many years.  Others are experimental and may
       change without warning or be completely removed.  Check the
       documentation on an individual feature to verify its current status.

       A question mark was chosen for this and for the minimal-matching
       construct because 1) question marks are rare in older regular
       expressions, and 2) whenever you see one, you should stop and
       "question" exactly what is going on.  That’s psychology...

       "(?#text)"
                 A comment.  The text is ignored.  If the "/x" modifier
                 enables whitespace formatting, a simple "#" will suffice.
                 Note that Perl closes the comment as soon as it sees a ")",
                 so there is no way to put a literal ")" in the comment.

       "(?pimsx-imsx)"
                 One or more embedded pattern-match modifiers, to be turned on
                 (or turned off, if preceded by "-") for the remainder of the
                 pattern or the remainder of the enclosing pattern group (if
                 any). This is particularly useful for dynamic patterns, such
                 as those read in from a configuration file, taken from an
                 argument, or specified in a table somewhere.  Consider the
                 case where some patterns want to be case sensitive and some
                 do not:  The case insensitive ones merely need to include
                 "(?i)" at the front of the pattern.  For example:

                     $pattern = "foobar";
                     if ( /$pattern/i ) { }

                     # more flexible:

                     $pattern = "(?i)foobar";
                     if ( /$pattern/ ) { }

                 These modifiers are restored at the end of the enclosing
                 group. For example,

                     ( (?i) blah ) \s+ \1

                 will match "blah" in any case, some spaces, and an exact
                 (including the case!)  repetition of the previous word,
                 assuming the "/x" modifier, and no "/i" modifier outside this
                 group.

                 Note that the "p" modifier is special in that it can only be
                 enabled, not disabled, and that its presence anywhere in a
                 pattern has a global effect. Thus "(?-p)" and "(?-p:...)" are
                 meaningless and will warn when executed under "use warnings".

       "(?:pattern)"
       "(?imsx-imsx:pattern)"
                 This is for clustering, not capturing; it groups
                 subexpressions like "()", but doesn’t make backreferences as
                 "()" does.  So

                     @fields = split(/\b(?:a|b|c)\b/)

                 is like

                     @fields = split(/\b(a|b|c)\b/)

                 but doesn’t spit out extra fields.  It’s also cheaper not to
                 capture characters if you don’t need to.

                 Any letters between "?" and ":" act as flags modifiers as
                 with "(?imsx-imsx)".  For example,

                     /(?s-i:more.*than).*million/i

                 is equivalent to the more verbose

                     /(?:(?s-i)more.*than).*million/i

       "(?|pattern)"
                 This is the "branch reset" pattern, which has the special
                 property that the capture buffers are numbered from the same
                 starting point in each alternation branch. It is available
                 starting from perl 5.10.0.

                 Capture buffers are numbered from left to right, but inside
                 this construct the numbering is restarted for each branch.

                 The numbering within each branch will be as normal, and any
                 buffers following this construct will be numbered as though
                 the construct contained only one branch, that being the one
                 with the most capture buffers in it.

                 This construct will be useful when you want to capture one of
                 a number of alternative matches.

                 Consider the following pattern.  The numbers underneath show
                 in which buffer the captured content will be stored.

                     # before  ---------------branch-reset----------- after
                     / ( a )  (?| x ( y ) z | (p (q) r) | (t) u (v) ) ( z ) /x
                     # 1            2         2  3        2     3     4

                 Note: as of Perl 5.10.0, branch resets interfere with the
                 contents of the "%+" hash, that holds named captures.
                 Consider using "%-" instead.

       Look-Around Assertions
                 Look-around assertions are zero width patterns which match a
                 specific pattern without including it in $&. Positive
                 assertions match when their subpattern matches, negative
                 assertions match when their subpattern fails. Look-behind
                 matches text up to the current match position, look-ahead
                 matches text following the current match position.

                 "(?=pattern)"
                     A zero-width positive look-ahead assertion.  For example,
                     "/\w+(?=\t)/" matches a word followed by a tab, without
                     including the tab in $&.

                 "(?!pattern)"
                     A zero-width negative look-ahead assertion.  For example
                     "/foo(?!bar)/" matches any occurrence of "foo" that isn’t
                     followed by "bar".  Note however that look-ahead and
                     look-behind are NOT the same thing.  You cannot use this
                     for look-behind.

                     If you are looking for a "bar" that isn’t preceded by a
                     "foo", "/(?!foo)bar/" will not do what you want.  That’s
                     because the "(?!foo)" is just saying that the next thing
                     cannot be "foo"--and it’s not, it’s a "bar", so "foobar"
                     will match.  You would have to do something like
                     "/(?!foo)...bar/" for that.   We say "like" because
                     there’s the case of your "bar" not having three
                     characters before it.  You could cover that this way:
                     "/(?:(?!foo)...|^.{0,2})bar/".  Sometimes it’s still
                     easier just to say:

                         if (/bar/ && $` !~ /foo$/)

                     For look-behind see below.

                 "(?<=pattern)" "\K"
                     A zero-width positive look-behind assertion.  For
                     example, "/(?<=\t)\w+/" matches a word that follows a
                     tab, without including the tab in $&.  Works only for
                     fixed-width look-behind.

                     There is a special form of this construct, called "\K",
                     which causes the regex engine to "keep" everything it had
                     matched prior to the "\K" and not include it in $&. This
                     effectively provides variable length look-behind. The use
                     of "\K" inside of another look-around assertion is
                     allowed, but the behaviour is currently not well defined.

                     For various reasons "\K" may be significantly more
                     efficient than the equivalent "(?<=...)" construct, and
                     it is especially useful in situations where you want to
                     efficiently remove something following something else in
                     a string. For instance

                       s/(foo)bar/$1/g;

                     can be rewritten as the much more efficient

                       s/foo\Kbar//g;

                 "(?<!pattern)"
                     A zero-width negative look-behind assertion.  For example
                     "/(?<!bar)foo/" matches any occurrence of "foo" that does
                     not follow "bar".  Works only for fixed-width look-
                     behind.

       "(?'NAME'pattern)"
       "(?<NAME>pattern)"
                 A named capture buffer. Identical in every respect to normal
                 capturing parentheses "()" but for the additional fact that
                 "%+" or "%-" may be used after a successful match to refer to
                 a named buffer. See "perlvar" for more details on the "%+"
                 and "%-" hashes.

                 If multiple distinct capture buffers have the same name then
                 the $+{NAME} will refer to the leftmost defined buffer in the
                 match.

                 The forms "(?'NAME'pattern)" and "(?<NAME>pattern)" are
                 equivalent.

                 NOTE: While the notation of this construct is the same as the
                 similar function in .NET regexes, the behavior is not. In
                 Perl the buffers are numbered sequentially regardless of
                 being named or not. Thus in the pattern

                   /(x)(?<foo>y)(z)/

                 $+{foo} will be the same as $2, and $3 will contain ’z’
                 instead of the opposite which is what a .NET regex hacker
                 might expect.

                 Currently NAME is restricted to simple identifiers only.  In
                 other words, it must match "/^[_A-Za-z][_A-Za-z0-9]*\z/" or
                 its Unicode extension (see utf8), though it isn’t extended by
                 the locale (see perllocale).

                 NOTE: In order to make things easier for programmers with
                 experience with the Python or PCRE regex engines, the pattern
                 "(?P<NAME>pattern)" may be used instead of
                 "(?<NAME>pattern)"; however this form does not support the
                 use of single quotes as a delimiter for the name.

       "\k<NAME>"
       "\k'NAME'"
                 Named backreference. Similar to numeric backreferences,
                 except that the group is designated by name and not number.
                 If multiple groups have the same name then it refers to the
                 leftmost defined group in the current match.

                 It is an error to refer to a name not defined by a
                 "(?<NAME>)" earlier in the pattern.

                 Both forms are equivalent.

                 NOTE: In order to make things easier for programmers with
                 experience with the Python or PCRE regex engines, the pattern
                 "(?P=NAME)" may be used instead of "\k<NAME>".

       "(?{ code })"
                 WARNING: This extended regular expression feature is
                 considered experimental, and may be changed without notice.
                 Code executed that has side effects may not perform
                 identically from version to version due to the effect of
                 future optimisations in the regex engine.

                 This zero-width assertion evaluates any embedded Perl code.
                 It always succeeds, and its "code" is not interpolated.
                 Currently, the rules to determine where the "code" ends are
                 somewhat convoluted.

                 This feature can be used together with the special variable
                 $^N to capture the results of submatches in variables without
                 having to keep track of the number of nested parentheses. For
                 example:

                   $_ = "The brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
                   /the (\S+)(?{ $color = $^N }) (\S+)(?{ $animal = $^N })/i;
                   print "color = $color, animal = $animal\n";

                 Inside the "(?{...})" block, $_ refers to the string the
                 regular expression is matching against. You can also use
                 "pos()" to know what is the current position of matching
                 within this string.

                 The "code" is properly scoped in the following sense: If the
                 assertion is backtracked (compare "Backtracking"), all
                 changes introduced after "local"ization are undone, so that

                   $_ = 'a' x 8;
                   m<
                      (?{ $cnt = 0 })                    # Initialize $cnt.
                      (
                        a
                        (?{
                            local $cnt = $cnt + 1;       # Update $cnt, backtracking-safe.
                        })
                      )*
                      aaaa
                      (?{ $res = $cnt })                 # On success copy to non-localized
                                                         # location.
                    >x;

                 will set "$res = 4".  Note that after the match, $cnt returns
                 to the globally introduced value, because the scopes that
                 restrict "local" operators are unwound.

                 This assertion may be used as a
                 "(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)" switch.  If not used
                 in this way, the result of evaluation of "code" is put into
                 the special variable $^R.  This happens immediately, so $^R
                 can be used from other "(?{ code })" assertions inside the
                 same regular expression.

                 The assignment to $^R above is properly localized, so the old
                 value of $^R is restored if the assertion is backtracked;
                 compare "Backtracking".

                 Due to an unfortunate implementation issue, the Perl code
                 contained in these blocks is treated as a compile time
                 closure that can have seemingly bizarre consequences when
                 used with lexically scoped variables inside of subroutines or
                 loops.  There are various workarounds for this, including
                 simply using global variables instead.  If you are using this
                 construct and strange results occur then check for the use of
                 lexically scoped variables.

                 For reasons of security, this construct is forbidden if the
                 regular expression involves run-time interpolation of
                 variables, unless the perilous "use re 'eval'" pragma has
                 been used (see re), or the variables contain results of
                 "qr//" operator (see "qr/STRING/imosx" in perlop).

                 This restriction is due to the wide-spread and remarkably
                 convenient custom of using run-time determined strings as
                 patterns.  For example:

                     $re = <>;
                     chomp $re;
                     $string =~ /$re/;

                 Before Perl knew how to execute interpolated code within a
                 pattern, this operation was completely safe from a security
                 point of view, although it could raise an exception from an
                 illegal pattern.  If you turn on the "use re 'eval'", though,
                 it is no longer secure, so you should only do so if you are
                 also using taint checking.  Better yet, use the carefully
                 constrained evaluation within a Safe compartment.  See
                 perlsec for details about both these mechanisms.

                 Because Perl’s regex engine is currently not re-entrant,
                 interpolated code may not invoke the regex engine either
                 directly with "m//" or "s///"), or indirectly with functions
                 such as "split".

       "(??{ code })"
                 WARNING: This extended regular expression feature is
                 considered experimental, and may be changed without notice.
                 Code executed that has side effects may not perform
                 identically from version to version due to the effect of
                 future optimisations in the regex engine.

                 This is a "postponed" regular subexpression.  The "code" is
                 evaluated at run time, at the moment this subexpression may
                 match.  The result of evaluation is considered as a regular
                 expression and matched as if it were inserted instead of this
                 construct.  Note that this means that the contents of capture
                 buffers defined inside an eval’ed pattern are not available
                 outside of the pattern, and vice versa, there is no way for
                 the inner pattern to refer to a capture buffer defined
                 outside.  Thus,

                     ('a' x 100)=~/(??{'(.)' x 100})/

                 will match, it will not set $1.

                 The "code" is not interpolated.  As before, the rules to
                 determine where the "code" ends are currently somewhat
                 convoluted.

                 The following pattern matches a parenthesized group:

                   $re = qr{
                              \(
                              (?:
                                 (?> [^()]+ )    # Non-parens without backtracking
                               |
                                 (??{ $re })     # Group with matching parens
                              )*
                              \)
                           }x;

                 See also "(?PARNO)" for a different, more efficient way to
                 accomplish the same task.

                 Because perl’s regex engine is not currently re-entrant,
                 delayed code may not invoke the regex engine either directly
                 with "m//" or "s///"), or indirectly with functions such as
                 "split".

                 Recursing deeper than 50 times without consuming any input
                 string will result in a fatal error.  The maximum depth is
                 compiled into perl, so changing it requires a custom build.

       "(?PARNO)" "(?-PARNO)" "(?+PARNO)" "(?R)" "(?0)"
                 Similar to "(??{ code })" except it does not involve
                 compiling any code, instead it treats the contents of a
                 capture buffer as an independent pattern that must match at
                 the current position.  Capture buffers contained by the
                 pattern will have the value as determined by the outermost
                 recursion.

                 PARNO is a sequence of digits (not starting with 0) whose
                 value reflects the paren-number of the capture buffer to
                 recurse to. "(?R)" recurses to the beginning of the whole
                 pattern. "(?0)" is an alternate syntax for "(?R)". If PARNO
                 is preceded by a plus or minus sign then it is assumed to be
                 relative, with negative numbers indicating preceding capture
                 buffers and positive ones following. Thus "(?-1)" refers to
                 the most recently declared buffer, and "(?+1)" indicates the
                 next buffer to be declared.  Note that the counting for
                 relative recursion differs from that of relative
                 backreferences, in that with recursion unclosed buffers are
                 included.

                 The following pattern matches a function foo() which may
                 contain balanced parentheses as the argument.

                   $re = qr{ (                    # paren group 1 (full function)
                               foo
                               (                  # paren group 2 (parens)
                                 \(
                                   (              # paren group 3 (contents of parens)
                                   (?:
                                    (?> [^()]+ )  # Non-parens without backtracking
                                   |
                                    (?2)          # Recurse to start of paren group 2
                                   )*
                                   )
                                 \)
                               )
                             )
                           }x;

                 If the pattern was used as follows

                     'foo(bar(baz)+baz(bop))'=~/$re/
                         and print "\$1 = $1\n",
                                   "\$2 = $2\n",
                                   "\$3 = $3\n";

                 the output produced should be the following:

                     $1 = foo(bar(baz)+baz(bop))
                     $2 = (bar(baz)+baz(bop))
                     $3 = bar(baz)+baz(bop)

                 If there is no corresponding capture buffer defined, then it
                 is a fatal error.  Recursing deeper than 50 times without
                 consuming any input string will also result in a fatal error.
                 The maximum depth is compiled into perl, so changing it
                 requires a custom build.

                 The following shows how using negative indexing can make it
                 easier to embed recursive patterns inside of a "qr//"
                 construct for later use:

                     my $parens = qr/(\((?:[^()]++|(?-1))*+\))/;
                     if (/foo $parens \s+ + \s+ bar $parens/x) {
                        # do something here...
                     }

                 Note that this pattern does not behave the same way as the
                 equivalent PCRE or Python construct of the same form. In Perl
                 you can backtrack into a recursed group, in PCRE and Python
                 the recursed into group is treated as atomic. Also, modifiers
                 are resolved at compile time, so constructs like (?i:(?1)) or
                 (?:(?i)(?1)) do not affect how the sub-pattern will be
                 processed.

       "(?&NAME)"
                 Recurse to a named subpattern. Identical to "(?PARNO)" except
                 that the parenthesis to recurse to is determined by name. If
                 multiple parentheses have the same name, then it recurses to
                 the leftmost.

                 It is an error to refer to a name that is not declared
                 somewhere in the pattern.

                 NOTE: In order to make things easier for programmers with
                 experience with the Python or PCRE regex engines the pattern
                 "(?P>NAME)" may be used instead of "(?&NAME)".

       "(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)"
       "(?(condition)yes-pattern)"
                 Conditional expression.  "(condition)" should be either an
                 integer in parentheses (which is valid if the corresponding
                 pair of parentheses matched), a
                 look-ahead/look-behind/evaluate zero-width assertion, a name
                 in angle brackets or single quotes (which is valid if a
                 buffer with the given name matched), or the special symbol
                 (R) (true when evaluated inside of recursion or eval).
                 Additionally the R may be followed by a number, (which will
                 be true when evaluated when recursing inside of the
                 appropriate group), or by &NAME, in which case it will be
                 true only when evaluated during recursion in the named group.

                 Here’s a summary of the possible predicates:

                 (1) (2) ...
                     Checks if the numbered capturing buffer has matched
                     something.

                 (<NAME>) (’NAME’)
                     Checks if a buffer with the given name has matched
                     something.

                 (?{ CODE })
                     Treats the code block as the condition.

                 (R) Checks if the expression has been evaluated inside of
                     recursion.

                 (R1) (R2) ...
                     Checks if the expression has been evaluated while
                     executing directly inside of the n-th capture group. This
                     check is the regex equivalent of

                       if ((caller(0))[3] eq 'subname') { ... }

                     In other words, it does not check the full recursion
                     stack.

                 (R&NAME)
                     Similar to "(R1)", this predicate checks to see if we’re
                     executing directly inside of the leftmost group with a
                     given name (this is the same logic used by "(?&NAME)" to
                     disambiguate). It does not check the full stack, but only
                     the name of the innermost active recursion.

                 (DEFINE)
                     In this case, the yes-pattern is never directly executed,
                     and no no-pattern is allowed. Similar in spirit to
                     "(?{0})" but more efficient.  See below for details.

                 For example:

                     m{ ( \( )?
                        [^()]+
                        (?(1) \) )
                      }x

                 matches a chunk of non-parentheses, possibly included in
                 parentheses themselves.

                 A special form is the "(DEFINE)" predicate, which never
                 executes directly its yes-pattern, and does not allow a no-
                 pattern. This allows to define subpatterns which will be
                 executed only by using the recursion mechanism.  This way,
                 you can define a set of regular expression rules that can be
                 bundled into any pattern you choose.

                 It is recommended that for this usage you put the DEFINE
                 block at the end of the pattern, and that you name any
                 subpatterns defined within it.

                 Also, it’s worth noting that patterns defined this way
                 probably will not be as efficient, as the optimiser is not
                 very clever about handling them.

                 An example of how this might be used is as follows:

                   /(?<NAME>(?&NAME_PAT))(?<ADDR>(?&ADDRESS_PAT))
                    (?(DEFINE)
                      (?<NAME_PAT>....)
                      (?<ADRESS_PAT>....)
                    )/x

                 Note that capture buffers matched inside of recursion are not
                 accessible after the recursion returns, so the extra layer of
                 capturing buffers is necessary. Thus $+{NAME_PAT} would not
                 be defined even though $+{NAME} would be.

       "(?>pattern)"
                 An "independent" subexpression, one which matches the
                 substring that a standalone "pattern" would match if anchored
                 at the given position, and it matches nothing other than this
                 substring.  This construct is useful for optimizations of
                 what would otherwise be "eternal" matches, because it will
                 not backtrack (see "Backtracking").  It may also be useful in
                 places where the "grab all you can, and do not give anything
                 back" semantic is desirable.

                 For example: "^(?>a*)ab" will never match, since "(?>a*)"
                 (anchored at the beginning of string, as above) will match
                 all characters "a" at the beginning of string, leaving no "a"
                 for "ab" to match.  In contrast, "a*ab" will match the same
                 as "a+b", since the match of the subgroup "a*" is influenced
                 by the following group "ab" (see "Backtracking").  In
                 particular, "a*" inside "a*ab" will match fewer characters
                 than a standalone "a*", since this makes the tail match.

                 An effect similar to "(?>pattern)" may be achieved by writing
                 "(?=(pattern))\1".  This matches the same substring as a
                 standalone "a+", and the following "\1" eats the matched
                 string; it therefore makes a zero-length assertion into an
                 analogue of "(?>...)".  (The difference between these two
                 constructs is that the second one uses a capturing group,
                 thus shifting ordinals of backreferences in the rest of a
                 regular expression.)

                 Consider this pattern:

                     m{ \(
                           (
                             [^()]+              # x+
                           |
                             \( [^()]* \)
                           )+
                        \)
                      }x

                 That will efficiently match a nonempty group with matching
                 parentheses two levels deep or less.  However, if there is no
                 such group, it will take virtually forever on a long string.
                 That’s because there are so many different ways to split a
                 long string into several substrings.  This is what "(.+)+" is
                 doing, and "(.+)+" is similar to a subpattern of the above
                 pattern.  Consider how the pattern above detects no-match on
                 "((()aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" in several seconds, but that each
                 extra letter doubles this time.  This exponential performance
                 will make it appear that your program has hung.  However, a
                 tiny change to this pattern

                     m{ \(
                           (
                             (?> [^()]+ )        # change x+ above to (?> x+ )
                           |
                             \( [^()]* \)
                           )+
                        \)
                      }x

                 which uses "(?>...)" matches exactly when the one above does
                 (verifying this yourself would be a productive exercise), but
                 finishes in a fourth the time when used on a similar string
                 with 1000000 "a"s.  Be aware, however, that this pattern
                 currently triggers a warning message under the "use warnings"
                 pragma or -w switch saying it "matches null string many times
                 in regex".

                 On simple groups, such as the pattern "(?> [^()]+ )", a
                 comparable effect may be achieved by negative look-ahead, as
                 in "[^()]+ (?! [^()] )".  This was only 4 times slower on a
                 string with 1000000 "a"s.

                 The "grab all you can, and do not give anything back"
                 semantic is desirable in many situations where on the first
                 sight a simple "()*" looks like the correct solution.
                 Suppose we parse text with comments being delimited by "#"
                 followed by some optional (horizontal) whitespace.  Contrary
                 to its appearance, "#[ \t]*" is not the correct subexpression
                 to match the comment delimiter, because it may "give up" some
                 whitespace if the remainder of the pattern can be made to
                 match that way.  The correct answer is either one of these:

                     (?>#[ \t]*)
                     #[ \t]*(?![ \t])

                 For example, to grab non-empty comments into $1, one should
                 use either one of these:

                     / (?> \# [ \t]* ) (        .+ ) /x;
                     /     \# [ \t]*   ( [^ \t] .* ) /x;

                 Which one you pick depends on which of these expressions
                 better reflects the above specification of comments.

                 In some literature this construct is called "atomic matching"
                 or "possessive matching".

                 Possessive quantifiers are equivalent to putting the item
                 they are applied to inside of one of these constructs. The
                 following equivalences apply:

                     Quantifier Form     Bracketing Form
                     ---------------     ---------------
                     PAT*+               (?>PAT*)
                     PAT++               (?>PAT+)
                     PAT?+               (?>PAT?)
                     PAT{min,max}+       (?>PAT{min,max})

   Special Backtracking Control Verbs
       WARNING: These patterns are experimental and subject to change or
       removal in a future version of Perl. Their usage in production code
       should be noted to avoid problems during upgrades.

       These special patterns are generally of the form "(*VERB:ARG)". Unless
       otherwise stated the ARG argument is optional; in some cases, it is
       forbidden.

       Any pattern containing a special backtracking verb that allows an
       argument has the special behaviour that when executed it sets the
       current packages’ $REGERROR and $REGMARK variables. When doing so the
       following rules apply:

       On failure, the $REGERROR variable will be set to the ARG value of the
       verb pattern, if the verb was involved in the failure of the match. If
       the ARG part of the pattern was omitted, then $REGERROR will be set to
       the name of the last "(*MARK:NAME)" pattern executed, or to TRUE if
       there was none. Also, the $REGMARK variable will be set to FALSE.

       On a successful match, the $REGERROR variable will be set to FALSE, and
       the $REGMARK variable will be set to the name of the last
       "(*MARK:NAME)" pattern executed.  See the explanation for the
       "(*MARK:NAME)" verb below for more details.

       NOTE: $REGERROR and $REGMARK are not magic variables like $1 and most
       other regex related variables. They are not local to a scope, nor
       readonly, but instead are volatile package variables similar to
       $AUTOLOAD.  Use "local" to localize changes to them to a specific scope
       if necessary.

       If a pattern does not contain a special backtracking verb that allows
       an argument, then $REGERROR and $REGMARK are not touched at all.

       Verbs that take an argument
           "(*PRUNE)" "(*PRUNE:NAME)"
               This zero-width pattern prunes the backtracking tree at the
               current point when backtracked into on failure. Consider the
               pattern "A (*PRUNE) B", where A and B are complex patterns.
               Until the "(*PRUNE)" verb is reached, A may backtrack as
               necessary to match. Once it is reached, matching continues in
               B, which may also backtrack as necessary; however, should B not
               match, then no further backtracking will take place, and the
               pattern will fail outright at the current starting position.

               The following example counts all the possible matching strings
               in a pattern (without actually matching any of them).

                   'aaab' =~ /a+b?(?{print "$&\n"; $count++})(*FAIL)/;
                   print "Count=$count\n";

               which produces:

                   aaab
                   aaa
                   aa
                   a
                   aab
                   aa
                   a
                   ab
                   a
                   Count=9

               If we add a "(*PRUNE)" before the count like the following

                   'aaab' =~ /a+b?(*PRUNE)(?{print "$&\n"; $count++})(*FAIL)/;
                   print "Count=$count\n";

               we prevent backtracking and find the count of the longest
               matching at each matching starting point like so:

                   aaab
                   aab
                   ab
                   Count=3

               Any number of "(*PRUNE)" assertions may be used in a pattern.

               See also "(?>pattern)" and possessive quantifiers for other
               ways to control backtracking. In some cases, the use of
               "(*PRUNE)" can be replaced with a "(?>pattern)" with no
               functional difference; however, "(*PRUNE)" can be used to
               handle cases that cannot be expressed using a "(?>pattern)"
               alone.

           "(*SKIP)" "(*SKIP:NAME)"
               This zero-width pattern is similar to "(*PRUNE)", except that
               on failure it also signifies that whatever text that was
               matched leading up to the "(*SKIP)" pattern being executed
               cannot be part of any match of this pattern. This effectively
               means that the regex engine "skips" forward to this position on
               failure and tries to match again, (assuming that there is
               sufficient room to match).

               The name of the "(*SKIP:NAME)" pattern has special
               significance. If a "(*MARK:NAME)" was encountered while
               matching, then it is that position which is used as the "skip
               point". If no "(*MARK)" of that name was encountered, then the
               "(*SKIP)" operator has no effect. When used without a name the
               "skip point" is where the match point was when executing the
               (*SKIP) pattern.

               Compare the following to the examples in "(*PRUNE)", note the
               string is twice as long:

                   'aaabaaab' =~ /a+b?(*SKIP)(?{print "$&\n"; $count++})(*FAIL)/;
                   print "Count=$count\n";

               outputs

                   aaab
                   aaab
                   Count=2

               Once the ’aaab’ at the start of the string has matched, and the
               "(*SKIP)" executed, the next starting point will be where the
               cursor was when the "(*SKIP)" was executed.

           "(*MARK:NAME)" "(*:NAME)" "(*MARK:NAME)" "(*:NAME)"
               This zero-width pattern can be used to mark the point reached
               in a string when a certain part of the pattern has been
               successfully matched. This mark may be given a name. A later
               "(*SKIP)" pattern will then skip forward to that point if
               backtracked into on failure. Any number of "(*MARK)" patterns
               are allowed, and the NAME portion is optional and may be
               duplicated.

               In addition to interacting with the "(*SKIP)" pattern,
               "(*MARK:NAME)" can be used to "label" a pattern branch, so that
               after matching, the program can determine which branches of the
               pattern were involved in the match.

               When a match is successful, the $REGMARK variable will be set
               to the name of the most recently executed "(*MARK:NAME)" that
               was involved in the match.

               This can be used to determine which branch of a pattern was
               matched without using a separate capture buffer for each
               branch, which in turn can result in a performance improvement,
               as perl cannot optimize "/(?:(x)|(y)|(z))/" as efficiently as
               something like "/(?:x(*MARK:x)|y(*MARK:y)|z(*MARK:z))/".

               When a match has failed, and unless another verb has been
               involved in failing the match and has provided its own name to
               use, the $REGERROR variable will be set to the name of the most
               recently executed "(*MARK:NAME)".

               See "(*SKIP)" for more details.

               As a shortcut "(*MARK:NAME)" can be written "(*:NAME)".

           "(*THEN)" "(*THEN:NAME)"
               This is similar to the "cut group" operator "::" from Perl 6.
               Like "(*PRUNE)", this verb always matches, and when backtracked
               into on failure, it causes the regex engine to try the next
               alternation in the innermost enclosing group (capturing or
               otherwise).

               Its name comes from the observation that this operation
               combined with the alternation operator ("|") can be used to
               create what is essentially a pattern-based if/then/else block:

                 ( COND (*THEN) FOO | COND2 (*THEN) BAR | COND3 (*THEN) BAZ )

               Note that if this operator is used and NOT inside of an
               alternation then it acts exactly like the "(*PRUNE)" operator.

                 / A (*PRUNE) B /

               is the same as

                 / A (*THEN) B /

               but

                 / ( A (*THEN) B | C (*THEN) D ) /

               is not the same as

                 / ( A (*PRUNE) B | C (*PRUNE) D ) /

               as after matching the A but failing on the B the "(*THEN)" verb
               will backtrack and try C; but the "(*PRUNE)" verb will simply
               fail.

           "(*COMMIT)"
               This is the Perl 6 "commit pattern" "<commit>" or ":::". It’s a
               zero-width pattern similar to "(*SKIP)", except that when
               backtracked into on failure it causes the match to fail
               outright. No further attempts to find a valid match by
               advancing the start pointer will occur again.  For example,

                   'aaabaaab' =~ /a+b?(*COMMIT)(?{print "$&\n"; $count++})(*FAIL)/;
                   print "Count=$count\n";

               outputs

                   aaab
                   Count=1

               In other words, once the "(*COMMIT)" has been entered, and if
               the pattern does not match, the regex engine will not try any
               further matching on the rest of the string.

       Verbs without an argument
           "(*FAIL)" "(*F)"
               This pattern matches nothing and always fails. It can be used
               to force the engine to backtrack. It is equivalent to "(?!)",
               but easier to read. In fact, "(?!)" gets optimised into
               "(*FAIL)" internally.

               It is probably useful only when combined with "(?{})" or
               "(??{})".

           "(*ACCEPT)"
               WARNING: This feature is highly experimental. It is not
               recommended for production code.

               This pattern matches nothing and causes the end of successful
               matching at the point at which the "(*ACCEPT)" pattern was
               encountered, regardless of whether there is actually more to
               match in the string. When inside of a nested pattern, such as
               recursion, or in a subpattern dynamically generated via
               "(??{})", only the innermost pattern is ended immediately.

               If the "(*ACCEPT)" is inside of capturing buffers then the
               buffers are marked as ended at the point at which the
               "(*ACCEPT)" was encountered.  For instance:

                 'AB' =~ /(A (A|B(*ACCEPT)|C) D)(E)/x;

               will match, and $1 will be "AB" and $2 will be "B", $3 will not
               be set. If another branch in the inner parentheses were
               matched, such as in the string ’ACDE’, then the "D" and "E"
               would have to be matched as well.

   Backtracking
       NOTE: This section presents an abstract approximation of regular
       expression behavior.  For a more rigorous (and complicated) view of the
       rules involved in selecting a match among possible alternatives, see
       "Combining RE Pieces".

       A fundamental feature of regular expression matching involves the
       notion called backtracking, which is currently used (when needed) by
       all regular non-possessive expression quantifiers, namely "*", "*?",
       "+", "+?", "{n,m}", and "{n,m}?".  Backtracking is often optimized
       internally, but the general principle outlined here is valid.

       For a regular expression to match, the entire regular expression must
       match, not just part of it.  So if the beginning of a pattern
       containing a quantifier succeeds in a way that causes later parts in
       the pattern to fail, the matching engine backs up and recalculates the
       beginning part--that’s why it’s called backtracking.

       Here is an example of backtracking:  Let’s say you want to find the
       word following "foo" in the string "Food is on the foo table.":

           $_ = "Food is on the foo table.";
           if ( /\b(foo)\s+(\w+)/i ) {
               print "$2 follows $1.\n";
           }

       When the match runs, the first part of the regular expression
       ("\b(foo)") finds a possible match right at the beginning of the
       string, and loads up $1 with "Foo".  However, as soon as the matching
       engine sees that there’s no whitespace following the "Foo" that it had
       saved in $1, it realizes its mistake and starts over again one
       character after where it had the tentative match.  This time it goes
       all the way until the next occurrence of "foo". The complete regular
       expression matches this time, and you get the expected output of "table
       follows foo."

       Sometimes minimal matching can help a lot.  Imagine you’d like to match
       everything between "foo" and "bar".  Initially, you write something
       like this:

           $_ =  "The food is under the bar in the barn.";
           if ( /foo(.*)bar/ ) {
               print "got <$1>\n";
           }

       Which perhaps unexpectedly yields:

         got <d is under the bar in the >

       That’s because ".*" was greedy, so you get everything between the first
       "foo" and the last "bar".  Here it’s more effective to use minimal
       matching to make sure you get the text between a "foo" and the first
       "bar" thereafter.

           if ( /foo(.*?)bar/ ) { print "got <$1>\n" }
         got <d is under the >

       Here’s another example. Let’s say you’d like to match a number at the
       end of a string, and you also want to keep the preceding part of the
       match.  So you write this:

           $_ = "I have 2 numbers: 53147";
           if ( /(.*)(\d*)/ ) {                                # Wrong!
               print "Beginning is <$1>, number is <$2>.\n";
           }

       That won’t work at all, because ".*" was greedy and gobbled up the
       whole string. As "\d*" can match on an empty string the complete
       regular expression matched successfully.

           Beginning is <I have 2 numbers: 53147>, number is <>.

       Here are some variants, most of which don’t work:

           $_ = "I have 2 numbers: 53147";
           @pats = qw{
               (.*)(\d*)
               (.*)(\d+)
               (.*?)(\d*)
               (.*?)(\d+)
               (.*)(\d+)$
               (.*?)(\d+)$
               (.*)\b(\d+)$
               (.*\D)(\d+)$
           };

           for $pat (@pats) {
               printf "%-12s ", $pat;
               if ( /$pat/ ) {
                   print "<$1> <$2>\n";
               } else {
                   print "FAIL\n";
               }
           }

       That will print out:

           (.*)(\d*)    <I have 2 numbers: 53147> <>
           (.*)(\d+)    <I have 2 numbers: 5314> <7>
           (.*?)(\d*)   <> <>
           (.*?)(\d+)   <I have > <2>
           (.*)(\d+)$   <I have 2 numbers: 5314> <7>
           (.*?)(\d+)$  <I have 2 numbers: > <53147>
           (.*)\b(\d+)$ <I have 2 numbers: > <53147>
           (.*\D)(\d+)$ <I have 2 numbers: > <53147>

       As you see, this can be a bit tricky.  It’s important to realize that a
       regular expression is merely a set of assertions that gives a
       definition of success.  There may be 0, 1, or several different ways
       that the definition might succeed against a particular string.  And if
       there are multiple ways it might succeed, you need to understand
       backtracking to know which variety of success you will achieve.

       When using look-ahead assertions and negations, this can all get even
       trickier.  Imagine you’d like to find a sequence of non-digits not
       followed by "123".  You might try to write that as

           $_ = "ABC123";
           if ( /^\D*(?!123)/ ) {              # Wrong!
               print "Yup, no 123 in $_\n";
           }

       But that isn’t going to match; at least, not the way you’re hoping.  It
       claims that there is no 123 in the string.  Here’s a clearer picture of
       why that pattern matches, contrary to popular expectations:

           $x = 'ABC123';
           $y = 'ABC445';

           print "1: got $1\n" if $x =~ /^(ABC)(?!123)/;
           print "2: got $1\n" if $y =~ /^(ABC)(?!123)/;

           print "3: got $1\n" if $x =~ /^(\D*)(?!123)/;
           print "4: got $1\n" if $y =~ /^(\D*)(?!123)/;

       This prints

           2: got ABC
           3: got AB
           4: got ABC

       You might have expected test 3 to fail because it seems to a more
       general purpose version of test 1.  The important difference between
       them is that test 3 contains a quantifier ("\D*") and so can use
       backtracking, whereas test 1 will not.  What’s happening is that you’ve
       asked "Is it true that at the start of $x, following 0 or more non-
       digits, you have something that’s not 123?"  If the pattern matcher had
       let "\D*" expand to "ABC", this would have caused the whole pattern to
       fail.

       The search engine will initially match "\D*" with "ABC".  Then it will
       try to match "(?!123" with "123", which fails.  But because a
       quantifier ("\D*") has been used in the regular expression, the search
       engine can backtrack and retry the match differently in the hope of
       matching the complete regular expression.

       The pattern really, really wants to succeed, so it uses the standard
       pattern back-off-and-retry and lets "\D*" expand to just "AB" this
       time.  Now there’s indeed something following "AB" that is not "123".
       It’s "C123", which suffices.

       We can deal with this by using both an assertion and a negation.  We’ll
       say that the first part in $1 must be followed both by a digit and by
       something that’s not "123".  Remember that the look-aheads are zero-
       width expressions--they only look, but don’t consume any of the string
       in their match.  So rewriting this way produces what you’d expect; that
       is, case 5 will fail, but case 6 succeeds:

           print "5: got $1\n" if $x =~ /^(\D*)(?=\d)(?!123)/;
           print "6: got $1\n" if $y =~ /^(\D*)(?=\d)(?!123)/;

           6: got ABC

       In other words, the two zero-width assertions next to each other work
       as though they’re ANDed together, just as you’d use any built-in
       assertions:  "/^$/" matches only if you’re at the beginning of the line
       AND the end of the line simultaneously.  The deeper underlying truth is
       that juxtaposition in regular expressions always means AND, except when
       you write an explicit OR using the vertical bar.  "/ab/" means match
       "a" AND (then) match "b", although the attempted matches are made at
       different positions because "a" is not a zero-width assertion, but a
       one-width assertion.

       WARNING: Particularly complicated regular expressions can take
       exponential time to solve because of the immense number of possible
       ways they can use backtracking to try for a match.  For example,
       without internal optimizations done by the regular expression engine,
       this will take a painfully long time to run:

           'aaaaaaaaaaaa' =~ /((a{0,5}){0,5})*[c]/

       And if you used "*"’s in the internal groups instead of limiting them
       to 0 through 5 matches, then it would take forever--or until you ran
       out of stack space.  Moreover, these internal optimizations are not
       always applicable.  For example, if you put "{0,5}" instead of "*" on
       the external group, no current optimization is applicable, and the
       match takes a long time to finish.

       A powerful tool for optimizing such beasts is what is known as an
       "independent group", which does not backtrack (see "(?>pattern)").
       Note also that zero-length look-ahead/look-behind assertions will not
       backtrack to make the tail match, since they are in "logical" context:
       only whether they match is considered relevant.  For an example where
       side-effects of look-ahead might have influenced the following match,
       see "(?>pattern)".

   Version 8 Regular Expressions
       In case you’re not familiar with the "regular" Version 8 regex
       routines, here are the pattern-matching rules not described above.

       Any single character matches itself, unless it is a metacharacter with
       a special meaning described here or above.  You can cause characters
       that normally function as metacharacters to be interpreted literally by
       prefixing them with a "\" (e.g., "\." matches a ".", not any character;
       "\\" matches a "\"). This escape mechanism is also required for the
       character used as the pattern delimiter.

       A series of characters matches that series of characters in the target
       string, so the pattern  "blurfl" would match "blurfl" in the target
       string.

       You can specify a character class, by enclosing a list of characters in
       "[]", which will match any character from the list.  If the first
       character after the "[" is "^", the class matches any character not in
       the list.  Within a list, the "-" character specifies a range, so that
       "a-z" represents all characters between "a" and "z", inclusive.  If you
       want either "-" or "]" itself to be a member of a class, put it at the
       start of the list (possibly after a "^"), or escape it with a
       backslash.  "-" is also taken literally when it is at the end of the
       list, just before the closing "]".  (The following all specify the same
       class of three characters: "[-az]", "[az-]", and "[a\-z]".  All are
       different from "[a-z]", which specifies a class containing twenty-six
       characters, even on EBCDIC-based character sets.)  Also, if you try to
       use the character classes "\w", "\W", "\s", "\S", "\d", or "\D" as
       endpoints of a range, the "-" is understood literally.

       Note also that the whole range idea is rather unportable between
       character sets--and even within character sets they may cause results
       you probably didn’t expect.  A sound principle is to use only ranges
       that begin from and end at either alphabetics 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, \nnn, where nnn is a string of
       octal digits, matches the character whose coded character set value is
       nnn.  Similarly, \xnn, where nn are hexadecimal digits, matches the
       character whose numeric value is nn. The expression \cx matches the
       character control-x.  Finally, the "." metacharacter matches any
       character except "\n" (unless you use "/s").

       You can specify a series of alternatives for a pattern using "|" to
       separate them, so that "fee|fie|foe" will match any of "fee", "fie", or
       "foe" in the target string (as would "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 "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 "[fee|fie|foe]" you’re really only matching
       "[feio|]".

       Within a pattern, you may designate subpatterns for later reference by
       enclosing them in parentheses, and you may refer back to the nth
       subpattern later in the pattern using the metacharacter \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, "(0|0x)\d*\s\1\d*" will match "0x1234 0x4321",
       but not "0x1234 01234", because subpattern 1 matched "0x", even though
       the rule "0|0x" could potentially match the leading 0 in the second
       number.

   Warning on \1 Instead of $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
       sed addicts, but it’s a dirty habit to get into.  That’s because in
       PerlThink, the righthand side of an "s///" is a double-quoted string.
       "\1" in the usual double-quoted string means a control-A.  The
       customary Unix meaning of "\1" is kludged in for "s///".  However, if
       you get into the habit of doing that, you get yourself into trouble if
       you then add an "/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 "\{1}000", whereas you can fix it
       with "${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 left side of the "s///".

   Repeated Patterns Matching a Zero-length Substring
       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 "o?" matches at the beginning of 'foo', and since the position in
       the string is not moved by the match, "o?" would match again and again
       because of the "*" quantifier.  Another common way to create a similar
       cycle is with the looping modifier "//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 forcefully breaking the infinite
       loop.  The rules for this are different for lower-level loops given by
       the greedy quantifiers "*+{}", and for higher-level ones like the "/g"
       modifier or split() operator.

       The lower-level loops are 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
       "Backtracking"), and so the second best match is chosen if the best
       match is of zero length.

       For example:

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

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

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

       The additional state of being 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
       "split".

   Combining RE Pieces
       Each of the elementary pieces of regular expressions which were
       described before (such as "ab" or "\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 "ST", "S|T", "S*"
       etc (in these examples "S" and "T" are regular subexpressions).

       Such combinations can include alternatives, leading to a problem of
       choice: if we match a regular expression "a|ab" against "abc", will it
       match substring "a" or "ab"?  One way to describe which substring is
       actually matched is the concept of backtracking (see "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 "S" and "T" are regular subexpressions.

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

           If "A" is better match for "S" than "A'", "AB" is a better match
           than "A'B'".

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

       "S|T"
           When "S" can match, it is a better match than when only "T" can
           match.

           Ordering of two matches for "S" is the same as for "S".  Similar
           for two matches for "T".

       "S{REPEAT_COUNT}"
           Matches as "SSS...S" (repeated as many times as necessary).

       "S{min,max}"
           Matches as "S{max}|S{max-1}|...|S{min+1}|S{min}".

       "S{min,max}?"
           Matches as "S{min}|S{min+1}|...|S{max-1}|S{max}".

       "S?", "S*", "S+"
           Same as "S{0,1}", "S{0,BIG_NUMBER}", "S{1,BIG_NUMBER}"
           respectively.

       "S??", "S*?", "S+?"
           Same as "S{0,1}?", "S{0,BIG_NUMBER}?", "S{1,BIG_NUMBER}?"
           respectively.

       "(?>S)"
           Matches the best match for "S" and only that.

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

       "(?!S)", "(?<!S)"
           For this grouping operator there is no need to describe the
           ordering, since only whether or not "S" can match is important.

       "(??{ EXPR })", "(?PARNO)"
           The ordering is the same as for the regular expression which is the
           result of EXPR, or the pattern contained by capture buffer PARNO.

       "(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)"
           Recall that which of "yes-pattern" or "no-pattern" actually matches
           is already determined.  The ordering of the matches is the same as
           for the chosen subexpression.

       The above recipes describe the ordering of matches 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.

   Creating Custom RE Engines
       Overloaded constants (see overload) provide a simple way to extend the
       functionality of the RE engine.

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

           # We must also take care of not escaping the legitimate \\Y|
           # sequence, hence the presence of '\\' in the conversion rules.
           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 "use customre" enables the new escape in constant regular
       expressions, i.e., those without any runtime variable interpolations.
       As documented in overload, this conversion will work only over literal
       parts of regular expressions.  For "\Y|$re\Y|" the variable part of
       this regular expression needs to be converted explicitly (but only if
       the special meaning of "\Y|" should be enabled inside $re):

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

PCRE/Python Support

       As of Perl 5.10.0, Perl supports several Python/PCRE specific
       extensions to the regex syntax. While Perl programmers are encouraged
       to use the Perl specific syntax, the following are also accepted:

       "(?P<NAME>pattern)"
           Define a named capture buffer. Equivalent to "(?<NAME>pattern)".

       "(?P=NAME)"
           Backreference to a named capture buffer. Equivalent to "\g{NAME}".

       "(?P>NAME)"
           Subroutine call to a named capture buffer. Equivalent to
           "(?&NAME)".

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.

SEE ALSO

       perlrequick.

       perlretut.

       "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.

       "Gory details of parsing quoted constructs" in perlop.

       perlfaq6.

       "pos" in perlfunc.

       perllocale.

       perlebcdic.

       Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl, published by O’Reilly
       and Associates.