You misunderstand. Backward compatibility is important. The behavior in the context of prior art is correct and consistent. The behavior in the context of naive expected outcome following a failed match is bogus.

The Apple/Python/PHP/Perl 6/... attitude of "onward and bugger legacy code" is anathema (although I understand where it comes from). This is not that!

Premature optimization is the root of all job security

In reply to Re^5: curious regex result for perl 5.8.8 by GrandFather
in thread curious regex result for perl 5.8.8 by erodrig

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