backreference
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: back-reference
English
[edit ]Alternative forms
[edit ]Etymology
[edit ]Pronunciation
[edit ]Noun
[edit ]backreference (plural backreferences )
- (regular expressions ) An item in a regular expression equivalent to the text matched by an earlier pattern in the expression.
- 2003, Rob Brooks-Bilson, Programming ColdFusion MX:
- The third part of the regular expression, \1, is the backreference and tells ColdFusion to refer back to the first subexpression[...]
- 2005, Ivan Ristic, Apache security:
- Path traversal occurs when directory backreferences are used in a path to gain access to the parent folder of a subfolder.
Verb
[edit ]backreference (third-person singular simple present backreferences , present participle backreferencing , simple past and past participle backreferenced )
- (regular expressions , transitive ) To access (the text matched by an earlier pattern in a regular expression).
- 2009, Larry Ullman, Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide, page 237:
- By wrapping it in parentheses, the attributes can be reused by backreferencing this part of the pattern[...]
- 2012, Tom Christiansen, brian d foy[sic ], Larry Wall, Programming Perl, page 46:
- It doesn't change what the part matches, so
/\d+/and/(\d+)/will still match as many digits as possible, but in the latter case they will be remembered in a special variable to be backreferenced later.