This is just a curiosity, but why is variable length lookbehind not implemented while variable length lookahead is? Is it because there is no logical need for it, i.e. there is a better way to write a regex that uses it? Or is due to some limitation of how regex can be implemented in perl?

Admittedly, each time I have run into the error writing a quick regex, there has indeed been a better way to write the pattern. To that end, a second question would be has anyone run into a use case where variable length lookbehind would be clearly useful over alternative patterns?

The below is a useless piece of code save only to generate the error.

my $string = 'aaaabcccc';
$string =~ s/(?<=a+)b(?=c+)/B/;
say $string;

# Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/(?<=a+)b(?=c+)
+/ at C:\Projects\test.pl line 15.

[download]

In reply to Why is variable length lookahead implemented while lookbehind is not? by Kc12349

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.