Re: [DISCUSSION] Validating regex pattern

Hi, > Historically, PHP supported three regex engines (POSIX, PCRE, Oniguruma). The POSIX engine was > dropped in PHP 7.0 and there is a draft RFC to drop support for Oniguruma [1], however, that still > means that at this time PHP supports two different regex engines, which each have their own criteria > for when a regex is a valid pattern, and for Oniguruma supports a multitude of regex dialects [2]. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the info! > It also makes the FILTER_VALIDATE_REGEX_PATTERN flag highly > ambiguous as it is unclear against which engine/dialect the regex would be validated. Indeed, the multi-engine "issue" makes it clear that it would be ambiguous. > Maybe the error code flags returned via preg_last_error() [4] > should be made more specific to allow for detecting when a regex function failed due to an error in > the regex. > Maybe the extensions should get a "throw on invalid regex" option, either via an ini > flag, a new function parameter or via an existing function like Mp½ŠÃ‘ > .8´¸ü7[mb_regex_set_options(). I like the first solution, I like the second one even more. It would be aligned with JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR. > I'm not sure what the best solution is, but going with an illogical solution just to try > and avoid the RFC process is not the way to go IMO. The purpose isn't to avoid the RFC process, I'll write one if necessary. I just want to gather opinions and deduct if it's necessary :) — Alexandre Daubois