Which regex flavors support captures (as opposed to capturing groups)?

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+5 Q:

Which regex flavors support captures (as opposed to capturing groups)?

As I just learned from this question, .NET regexes can access individual matches within a repeated capturing group.

I. e., if I apply a regex like \b(\w+\s*)+ to a string of words, only the last word will be stored in \1 or Match.Groups(1).Value, but using Match.Groups(1).Captures I get access to all the individual matches the regex iterated over.

Are there other regex flavors that support this besides .NET?

+1 A:

As far as I know, only .NET and Perl 6 offer that capability.

Alan Moore 2010-04-16 12:24:03

Thanks for Perl 6. Looks like the JGSoft engine is in for a little overhaul. Captures seem to me like a useful feature. I'm still on the fence whether recursive/balanced regexes are a Good Thing or whether they make regular expressions completely unmaintainable.

Tim Pietzcker 2010-04-16 12:30:04

I tend to think that if you need recursion *or* intermediate captures, you shouldn't be using regexes at all. At least, not Perl 5 era regexes; Perl 6 includes major changes to regex syntax, making it easier to use advanced features like those and still be able to read what you've written.

Alan Moore 2010-04-16 13:04:52

I've just looked at the Perl 6 regex docs. Wow, that *is* quite a change from Perl 5...

Tim Pietzcker 2010-04-16 14:00:17

ansaurus

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Which regex flavors support captures (as opposed to capturing groups)?

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