Plant a mention in the description of backreferences of the fact that

while \0 doesn't do what one might expect, \g<0> does.
This commit is contained in:
Eric S. Raymond 2001-08-28 12:50:03 +00:00
parent 8c64a54f75
commit 46ccd1dae5

View File

@ -297,6 +297,8 @@ the space after the group). This special sequence can only be used to
match one of the first 99 groups. If the first digit of \var{number}
is 0, or \var{number} is 3 octal digits long, it will not be interpreted
as a group match, but as the character with octal value \var{number}.
(There is a group 0, which is the entire matched pattern, but it can't
be referenced with \regexp{\e 0}; instead, use \regexp{\e g<0>}.)
Inside the \character{[} and \character{]} of a character class, all numeric
escapes are treated as characters.
@ -566,7 +568,9 @@ ignored.
\samp{\e g<2>} is therefore equivalent to \samp{\e 2}, but isn't
ambiguous in a replacement such as \samp{\e g<2>0}. \samp{\e 20}
would be interpreted as a reference to group 20, not a reference to
group 2 followed by the literal character \character{0}.
group 2 followed by the literal character \character{0}. The
backreference \samp{\e g<0>} substitutes in the entire substring
matched by the RE.
\end{funcdesc}
\begin{funcdesc}{subn}{pattern, repl, string\optional{, count}}