#49327 [NEW]: missing documentation

From: layton at layton dot tk Operating system: linux PHP version: Irrelevant PHP Bug Type: Documentation problem Bug description: missing documentation Description: ------------ the preg_match documentation and its relatives assume that the reader knows what all the special characters mean that make up a possible regular expression. I know that "everybody" knows perl -- except that a lot of people don't, and I know that "everybody" uses regular expressions, except that I wouldn't know if a perl regular expression would be the same as a lex regular expression. PS. your obsoleted regular expression functions are well documented. but those regular expressions don't work here, so I presume something has changed, although I wouldn't know what. PPS. when I was googling for answers, I found somebody who said that an ! meant something about an assertion, but neither he nor I understood what that might mean. Reproduce code: --------------- --- From manual page: function.preg-match --- @^(?:http://)?([^/]+)@i Expected result: ---------------- The man page says that I should expect this to match on the domain name part of a url. What I expected was some place that said @ means ....... ^ means ....... ( means ....... and so on. Actual result: -------------- confusion. The examples don't mean much when you don't know what the special characters mean. -- Edit bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=49327&edit=1 -- Try a snapshot (PHP 5.2): http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=trysnapshot52 Try a snapshot (PHP 5.3): http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=trysnapshot53 Try a snapshot (PHP 6.0): http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=trysnapshot60 Fixed in SVN: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=fixed Fixed in SVN and need be documented: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=needdocs Fixed in release: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=needtrace Need Reproduce Script: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=needscript Try newer version: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=oldversion Not developer issue: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=support Expected behavior: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=notwrong Not enough info: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=submittedtwice register_globals: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=globals PHP 4 support discontinued: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=php4 Daylight Savings: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=dst IIS Stability: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=isapi Install GNU Sed: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=gnused Floating point limitations: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=float No Zend Extensions: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=nozend MySQL Configuration Error: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=49327&r=mysqlcfg