Re^4: regex to rename last

First, I can never remember the exact syntax of the look-around assertions

They're fairly mnemonic, actually:

(?=PATTERN) - positive lookahead. Mnemonic: the following data equals (=; i.e. matches) the supplied pattern.
(?!PATTERN) - negative lookahead. Mnemonic: the following data does not (!) match the pattern.
(?<=PATTERN) - positive lookbehind. Mnemonic: the preceding (<) data equals (=; i.e. matches) the pattern.
(?<!PATTERN) - negative lookbehind. Mnemonic: the preceding (<) data does not (!) match the pattern.

Personally I might've chosen (?>=PATTERN) and (?>!PATTERN) for lookahead assertions to make the syntax of these symmetric in direction as well (though that would've clashed with non-backtracking patterns), but even this way I still think these are fairly easy to remember.

Comment on Re^4: regex to rename last _ with ,

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Re^5: regex to rename last _ with , by Grimy (Pilgrim) on Sep 15, 2014 at 09:36 UTC
Look-ahead is used much more frequently than lookbehind, hence the shorter syntax. Perl is quite heavily Huffman coded. Look-behind is actually almost useless, since variable-length look-behind isn’t supported. It can be approximated using \K	[reply]