[derriz]

A bit hyperbolic, no?

If you consider it "the weirdest ever", I'm guessing that I'm probably older than you. I've certainly been using regex long before PCRE became common.

As a vim user I compose 10s if not 100s of regexes a day. It does not use PCRE. Nor does sed, a tool I've been using for decades. Do you also recommend not using these?

[comex]

I use all of those tools but the inconsistency drives me crazy as it's hard to remember which syntax to use where. Here's how to match the end of a word:

ripgrep, Python, JavaScript, and practically every other non-C language: \b

vim: \>

BSD sed: [[:>:]]

GNU sed, GNU grep: \> or \b

BSD grep: \>, \b, or [[:>:]]

less: depends on the OS it's running on

[burntsushi]

Did you know that not all of those use the same definition of what a "word" character is? Regex engines differ on the inclusion of things like \p{Join_Control}, \p{Mark} and \p{Connector_Puncuation}. Although in the case of \p{Connector_Punctuation}, regex engines will usually at least include underscore. See: https://github.com/BurntSushi/rebar/blob/f9a4f5c9efda069e798...

And then there's \p{Letter}. It can be spelled in a lot of ways: \pL, \p{L}, \p{Letter}, \p{gc=Letter}, \p{gc:Letter}, \p{LeTtEr}. All equivalent. Very few regex engines support all of them. Several support \p{L} but not \pL. See: https://github.com/BurntSushi/rebar/blob/f9a4f5c9efda069e798...