How has support for regex best practices changed across recent Perl versions?

Support for regular expressions (regex) best practices in Perl has evolved significantly across recent versions. With each update, Perl has introduced new features, optimizations, and syntax improvements, making regex handling more efficient and user-friendly for developers.

For instance, Perl 5.10 introduced the //m (named captures) feature, which allows for more readable regex patterns. This improves maintainability and clarity when working with complex patterns.

Additionally, newer versions have added more robust regex testing functions, which contribute to better error handling and more informative debugging outputs. The enhanced performance of regex operations allows developers to work with larger data sets without significant slowdowns.

Here's an example of using named captures in regex:

$string = "My name is John Doe"; if ($string =~ /(?<first>\w+) (?<last>\w+)/) { print "First Name: $+{first}, Last Name: $+{last}"; }

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