Re: What should /\08/ match and do?

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 1:43 PM, demerphq <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 1 June 2010 19:05, Eric Brine <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 6:45 AM, demerphq <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> IMO these days octal, and any other non parenthesized code-like
> >> escapes should be deprecated.
> >
> > A stylistic warning in ambiguous cases (like Abigail's "/\08/ interpreted
> as
> > /\x{00}8/" warning) sounds like a good idea, but not a *deprecation*
> > warning. That would mean we're planning on removing octal support from
> Perl,
> > and I haven't heard any reasons for doing that. Does supporting octal
> > escapes cause maintenance problems?
>
> Any non-parenthesized escape structure using numeric values is a
> maintenance problem when seen from the point of view of modifying or
> joining snippets of a regex together.
>

Let me rephrase: Does supporting octal escapes cause problems in maintaining
or improving *perl*? That would be cause for deprecation, not the fact that
using the feature might lead to unreadable Perl code.

Or maybe I misunderstand and Perl needs to combine regex patterns
internally?