Subject: Re: bug#41006: 26.3; regular expressions documentation

From: Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 19:12:50 +0200

4 maj 2020 kl. 05.10 skrev Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>:

> Would you like to propose an ordering and classification by function?

Start with the lexical details: special chars, escaping, literals.
Then something like this:

* concatenation and alternative
* repetition: * + ? etc
* bracketing: \(?: ... \)
* single-character expressions: [...] '.' \cX etc
* zero-width assertions: ^ $ \< etc
* capture groups and backrefs

Aim for all in a single node, using subheadings as appropriate, as this is what the user probably wants to see. Use subnodes for some in-depth information such as named character classes.

As Stefan pointed out, a section comparing the syntax with that of other regexp implementations likely seen by the user would be very welcome. It would permit the reader to make use of existing knowledge while reducing mistakes coming from incorrect assumptions.