#49327 [Opn]: missing documentation

ID: 49327 Updated by: torben@php.net Reported By: layton at layton dot tk Status: Open Bug Type: Documentation problem Operating System: linux PHP Version: Irrelevant New Comment: The syntax is also quite heavily documented in the PCRE section of the PHP manual, under 'PCRE Syntax': http://www.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php The only reason I haven't marked this as Bogus is that perhaps the preg_*() function entries could use a 'See also' link to the syntax page. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2009-08-22 19:57:07] niel dot archer at blueyonder dot co dot uk PCRE is documented at http://www.pcre.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2009-08-22 02:21:29] layton at layton dot tk 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 this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=49327&edit=1