References

Sometimes it’s useful to match the same text as we matched before. For example, let’s try to match Rust’s raw strings, which look like r#"..."# or r###"..."###. They can have an arbitrary number of # characters, but must have the same number of #s at each end:

'r' :('#'*) '"' C* lazy '"' ::1

There are three important parts: First, there’s a capturing group matching any number of #s. We then match an arbitrary number of characters surrounded by quotes. Finally, there’s a ::1 reference. This matches the same text as was captured in capturing group 1. In other words, if the string started with ##, it also has to end with ##.

Another application is XML tags:

'<' :([word]+) '>' !['<']* '</' ::1 '>'

This is by no means a complete XML parser, but it recognizes an XML tag (without attributes) that doesn’t contain other XML tags. For example, it correctly matches <span>Hello world</span>. With a backreference, it ensures that the closing tag is the same as the opening tag.

Pomsky has three kinds of references:

• Numeric references, e.g. ::3, match a capturing group by its number.
• Named references, e.g. ::name, match a named capturing group by its name.
• Relative references, e.g. ::-1 or ::+2, match a capturing group relative to the current position. For example, ::-1 matches the previous capturing group, ::+1 matches the next one.

Note that some regex engines only support backreferences, not forward references. And even when forward references are supported, the referenced group must have been already matched. I.e., this is not allowed:

# doesn't work!
::1 :('test')

However, forward references can be used in repetitions to match what the referenced group captured in the previous repetition:

(::forward | :forward('test')  '!')*

This matches the text test!test, for example. In the first repetition, the second alternative matches test!, and the text test is captured by the forward capturing group. In the second iteration, the forward reference matches the text test.