Author: Zoltán Herczeg Date: To: ph10@hermes.cam.ac.uk, Pcre-dev CC: ND Subject: Re: [pcre-dev] Some words about assertion docs
> It turned out to be very easy to implement in the interpreter, but there > was quite a lot of necessary but straightforward work to add new opcodes
> and process them in the various scans of compiled patterns. Also, the
> documentation took some time.
Somehow it doesn't feel right to call this new construct as an "assertion", which normally checks whether a condition is true. I think the nature of this new construct is closer to "script run" which adds an extra task after a bracket is matched. The task here is resetting the string pointer. The terms positive and negative are also something you would use with an assertion, but this construct is definitely not one. Perhaps look_ahead (bracket) and look_behind (bracket) would be enough. The implementation perspective is something different. I would also discuss this with perl folks, at least notify them.
Anyway if my theory about "script run" is correct, implementing this in JIT will be easy.
