I seem to recall some discussions here on deviations between the math/compsci concept of Regular Expressions, and the actual implementation in the Perl engine. It seems like you have already hit upon a source to describe the former; for the latter, I suggest:
Update: example of one such discussion.
In reply to Re: Simplifying regexes
by GotToBTru
in thread Simplifying regexes
by ExReg
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