What are common pitfalls or gotchas with atomic groups and possessive quantifiers?

This article explores common pitfalls and gotchas associated with atomic groups and possessive quantifiers in Perl regular expressions. Understanding these concepts can improve your regex efficiency and avoid unexpected behavior.

Perl, Regular Expressions, Atomic Groups, Possessive Quantifiers, Regex Pitfalls


# Example of Atomic Group
if ($string =~ /(?:abc)+/) {
    # Matches one or more occurrences of 'abc'
}

# Example of Possessive Quantifier
if ($string =~ /abc+?/) {
    # Matches 'abc' followed by any number of 'c', but won't backtrack
}
    

Perl Regular Expressions Atomic Groups Possessive Quantifiers Regex Pitfalls