How has support for lookahead and lookbehind changed across recent Perl versions?

The support for lookahead and lookbehind assertions in Perl has evolved significantly over various versions. Initially, lookahead assertions were supported, but lookbehind assertions had limited functionality, especially in earlier releases. As Perl has progressed, enhancements have allowed for more complex patterns and increased performance, making regex capabilities more powerful and flexible for developers.
lookahead, lookbehind, Perl regex, regular expressions, Perl versions
# Example of lookahead and lookbehind in Perl my $string = "abcdef"; # Lookahead example: Match "abc" only if followed by "def" if ($string =~ /abc(?=def)/) { print "Lookahead matched!\n"; } # Lookbehind example: Match "def" only if preceded by "abc" if ($string =~ /(?<=abc)def/) { print "Lookbehind matched!\n"; }

lookahead lookbehind Perl regex regular expressions Perl versions