backreference
See also: back-reference
English
Alternative forms
Noun
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
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.
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