I read this as “PCRE now supported on Windows”. Is that right?
Yes, that’s correct. Note that the Docs pages don’t seem to be updated yet. Perl Regex is introduced as a new Inspector (on Windows only for now). The new Inspectors are
perl regexes <string>: regular expression
perl regular expressions <string>: regular expression
case insensitive perl regexes <string>: regular expression
case insensitive perl regular expressions <string>: regular expression
perl regex escape of <string>: string
There are many examples of Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions out there, one of the guides that I like is at https://www.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php
Take the example from https://www.php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.assertions.php of matching “the string ‘foo’ preceded by three digits but not 999”, we can see the new ‘perl regex’ inspector works with patterns the original ‘regex’ inspector could not use:
q: matches(regex("(?<=\d{3}(?<!999))foo")) of "123foo"
E: The expression could not be evaluated: Regex Error - No preceding re for repetition op.
q: matches(perl regex("(?<=\d{3}(?<!999))foo")) of "123foo"
A: foo
T: 0.218 ms
I: plural regular expression match
q: matches(perl regex("(?<=\d{3}(?<!999))foo")) of "999foo"
T: 0.099 ms
I: plural regular expression match
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