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authorKylie McClain <kylie@somas.is>2021-05-10 02:40:01 -0400
committerKylie McClain <kylie@somas.is>2021-05-16 09:16:14 -0400
commit4ae2102cd8ea34cd207c176c3d1ab7840c32d61c (patch)
tree8afe1a4b32ef8996a6793dc26c5f13304d185305
parentead12e11bdfc861c0f1decb9ff7e91582196fcfe (diff)
regex.asciidoc: rephrasing, style, consistency
* Polish some grammar in places. * Correct some capitalization nitpicks. * Use "newline" rather than "line feed", which tends to be more common in Kakoune's documentation thusfar. I rephrased some sections, as some of them read a little odd. * Zero width assertions * Consistently use "subject's beginning" instead of "subject begin", it reads better. * Improve the flow of the word boundary descriptions. * Modifiers * Improve phrasing to emphasize the linear nature of their usage and remove a double negative. * Use `.` instead of "dot", since that aids in searching through the page for things talking about the dot character. * Compatibility * Use asciidoc syntax for the link to the ECMA-262 standard. * Use better punctuation on the point about escapes.
-rw-r--r--doc/pages/regex.asciidoc124
1 files changed, 64 insertions, 60 deletions
diff --git a/doc/pages/regex.asciidoc b/doc/pages/regex.asciidoc
index b7fd5391..9c1f4859 100644
--- a/doc/pages/regex.asciidoc
+++ b/doc/pages/regex.asciidoc
@@ -1,29 +1,29 @@
= Regex
-== Regex Syntax
+== Regex syntax
-Kakoune regex syntax is based on the ECMAScript syntax, as defined by the
-ECMA-262 standard (see <<Compatibility>>).
+Kakoune regex syntax is based on ECMAScript syntax, as defined by the
+ECMA-262 standard (see <<regex#compatibility,:doc regex compatibility>>).
-Kakoune's regex always run on Unicode codepoint sequences, not on bytes.
+Kakoune's regex always runs on Unicode codepoint sequences, not on bytes.
== Literals
Every character except the syntax characters `\^$.*+?[]{}|().` match
-themselves. Syntax characters can be escaped with a backslash so `\$`
-will match a literal `$` and `\\` will match a literal `\`.
+themselves. Syntax characters can be escaped with a backslash so that
+`\$` will match a literal `$`, and `\\` will match a literal `\`.
Some literals are available as escape sequences:
* `\f` matches the form feed character.
-* `\n` matches the line feed character.
+* `\n` matches the newline character.
* `\r` matches the carriage return character.
* `\t` matches the tabulation character.
* `\v` matches the vertical tabulation character.
* `\0` matches the null character.
-* `\cX` matches the control-X character (X can be in `[A-Za-z]`).
-* `\xXX` matches the character whose codepoint is XX (in hexadecimal).
-* `\uXXXXXX` matches the character whose codepoint is XXXXXX (in hexadecimal).
+* `\cX` matches the control-`X` character (`X` can be in `[A-Za-z]`).
+* `\xXX` matches the character whose codepoint is `XX` (in hexadecimal).
+* `\uXXXXXX` matches the character whose codepoint is `XXXXXX` (in hexadecimal).
== Character classes
@@ -40,15 +40,15 @@ in the character class.
Literals match themselves, including syntax characters, so `^`
does not need to be escaped in a character class. `[\*+]` matches both
the `\*` character and the `+` character. Literal escape sequences are
-supported, so `[\n\r]` matches both the line feed and carriage return
+supported, so `[\n\r]` matches both the newline and carriage return
characters.
The `]` character needs to be escaped for it to match a literal `]`
instead of closing the character class.
Character ranges are written as `<start character>-<end character>`, so
-`[A-Z]` matches all upper case basic letters. `[A-Z0-9]` will match all
-upper cases basic letters and all basic digits.
+`[A-Z]` matches all uppercase basic letters. `[A-Z0-9]` will match all
+uppercase basic letters and all basic digits.
The `-` characters in a character class that are not specifying a
range are treated as literal `-`, so `[A-Z-+]` matches all upper case
@@ -62,15 +62,16 @@ Supported character class escapes are:
* `\h` which matches all horizontal whitespace characters.
Using an upper case letter instead of a lower case one will negate
-the character class, meaning for example that `\D` will match every
-non-digit character.
+the character class. For example, `\D` will match every non-digit
+character.
Character class escapes can be used outside of a character class, `\d`
is equivalent to `[\d]`.
== Any character
-`.` matches any character, including new lines.
+`.` matches any character, including newlines, by default.
+(see <<regex#modifiers,:doc regex modifiers>> on how to change it)
== Groups
@@ -99,16 +100,16 @@ matches `foo` followed by either `bar`, `baz` or `qux`.
== Quantifier
-Literals, Character classes, Any characters and groups can be followed
+Literals, character classes, any characters, and groups can be followed
by a quantifier, which specifies the number of times they can match.
-* `?` matches zero or one times.
+* `?` matches zero, or one time.
* `*` matches zero or more times.
* `+` matches one or more times.
-* `{n}` matches exactly n times.
-* `{n,}` matches n or more times.
-* `{n,m}` matches n to m times.
-* `{,m}` matches zero to m times.
+* `{n}` matches exactly `n` times.
+* `{n,}` matches `n` or more times.
+* `{n,m}` matches `n` to `m` times.
+* `{,m}` matches zero to `m` times.
By default, quantifiers are *greedy*, which means they will prefer to
match more characters if possible. Suffixing a quantifier with `?` will
@@ -117,37 +118,40 @@ as possible.
== Zero width assertions
-Assertions do not consume any character, but will prevent the regex
-from matching if they are not fulfilled.
+Assertions do not consume any character, but they will prevent the regex
+from matching if not fulfilled.
-* `^` matches at the start of a line, that is just after a new line
- character, or at the subject begin (except if specified that the
- subject begin is not a start of line).
-* `$` matches at the end of a line, that is just before a new line, or
- at the subject end (except if specified that the subject's end
+* `^` matches at the start of a line; that is, just after a newline
+ character, or at the subject's beginning (unless it is specified
+ that the subject's beginning is not a start of line).
+* `$` matches at the end of a line; that is, just before a newline, or
+ at the subject end (unless it is specified that the subject's end
is not an end of line).
-* `\b` matches at a word boundary, when one of the previous character
- and current character is a word character, and the other is not.
-* `\B` matches at a non word boundary, when both the previous character
- and the current character are word, or are not.
-* `\A` matches at the subject string begin.
-* `\z` matches at the subject string end.
-* `\K` matches anything, and resets the start position of the capture
- group 0 to the current position.
+* `\b` matches at a word boundary; which is to say that between the
+ previous character and the current character, one is a word
+ character, and the other is not.
+* `\B` matches at a non-word boundary; meaning, when both the previous
+ character and the current character are word characters, or both
+ are not.
+* `\A` matches at the subject string's beginning.
+* `\z` matches at the subject string's end.
+* `\K` matches anything, and resets the start position of capture group
+ 0 to the current position.
More complex assertions can be expressed with lookarounds:
-* `(?=...)` is a lookahead, it will match if its content matches the text
- following the current position
-* `(?!...)` is a negative lookahead, it will match if its content does
- not match the text following the current position
-* `(?<=...)` is a lookbehind, it will match if its content matches
- the text preceding the current position
-* `(?<!...)` is a negative lookbehind, it will match if its content does
- not match the text preceding the current position
+* `(?=...)` is a lookahead; it will match if its content matches the
+ text following the current position.
+* `(?!...)` is a negative lookahead; it will match if its content does
+ not match the text following the current position.
+* `(?<=...)` is a lookbehind; it will match if its content matches
+ the text preceding the current position.
+* `(?<!...)` is a negative lookbehind; it will match if its content does
+ not match the text preceding the current position.
-For performance reasons lookaround contents must be sequence of literals,
-character classes or any-character (`.`); Quantifiers are not supported.
+For performance reasons, lookaround contents must be a sequence of
+literals, character classes, or any character (`.`); quantifiers are not
+supported.
For example, `(?<!bar)(?=foo).` will match any character which is not
preceded by `bar` and where `foo` matches from the current position
@@ -158,10 +162,10 @@ preceded by `bar` and where `foo` matches from the current position
Some modifiers can control the matching behavior of the atoms following
them:
-* `(?i)` enables case-insensitive matching
-* `(?I)` disables case-insensitive matching (default)
-* `(?s)` enables dot-matches-newline (default)
-* `(?S)` disables dot-matches-newline
+* `(?i)` starts case-insensitive matching.
+* `(?I)` starts case-sensitive matching (default).
+* `(?s)` allows `.` to match newlines (default).
+* `(?S)` prevents `.` from matching newlines.
== Quoting
@@ -169,20 +173,20 @@ them:
a literal. That quoted sequence will continue until either the end of
the regex, or the appearance of `\E`.
-For example `.\Q.^$\E$` will match any character followed by the literal
-string `.^$` followed by an end of line.
+For example, `.\Q.^$\E$` will match any character followed by the
+literal string `.^$`, followed by an end of line.
== Compatibility
-The syntax tries to follow the ECMAScript regex syntax as defined by
-https://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-262/8.0/ some divergences
-exists for ease of use or performance reasons:
+Kakoune's syntax tries to follow the ECMAScript regex syntax, as defined
+by <https://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-262/8.0/>; some divergence
+exists for ease of use, or performance reasons:
-* lookarounds are not arbitrary, but lookbehind is supported.
+* Lookarounds are not arbitrary, but lookbehind is supported.
* `\K`, `\Q..\E`, `\A`, `\h` and `\z` are added.
-* Stricter handling of escaping, as we introduce additional
- escapes, identity escapes like `\X` with X a non-special character
+* Stricter handling of escaping, as we introduce additional escapes;
+ identity escapes like `\X` with `X` being a non-special character
are not accepted, to avoid confusions between `\h` meaning literal
`h` in ECMAScript, and horizontal blank in Kakoune.
-* `\uXXXXXX` uses 6 digits to cover all of unicode, instead of relying
+* `\uXXXXXX` uses 6 digits to cover all of Unicode, instead of relying
on ECMAScript UTF-16 surrogate pairs with 4 digits.