BC break in master (7.2) - Distinguish between unmatched subpatterns and empty matches in preg_*()

Hi, in master, feature request https://bugs.php.net/61780 has been implemented and merged into master thanks to https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1303 But as noted in the PR and even in the UPGRADING file, this is a BC break: . preg_match() and other PCRE functions now distinguish between unmatched subpatterns and empty matches by reporting NULL and "" (empty string), respectively. Formerly, either was reported as empty string. While trying to run Symfony's test suite against 7.2, we noticed that this BC break is hitting several components badly. If Symfony is hit, there will be many more userland code impacted for sure. As written explicitly in the releasing policy of php-src, BC breaks must not happen in minor versions. Therefore, I'm kindly but strongly asking for this BC break to be reconsidered and removed. Thanks for your consideration, Nicolas