I can try (although I admit I am too lazy to - but see below), but keep in mind that Ovid tried too in his famous node, and while that one helped me a lot, it was no substitute for the book. Regular expressions basically are (as Larry observed in the relevant Apocalypse) a language unto themselves, and noone (or so I'd hope) would expect to learn a programming language from one post on a forum. One thing that struck me as I read the book was that there are many references, both backward and forward, all over the book. I may try at some point (and then it is likely to be a series of nodes rather than just one), but I don't believe I will manage to explain the mechanics better than the book, and certainly not in as much depth.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re^3: An "ethical" use of dot-star ..? by Aristotle
in thread An "ethical" use of dot-star ..? by Tanalis

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.