For the specific example of the RE-extension "\<" the more common syntax
for it is "\b" and that is also understood by almost all regex engines
including the ones used in old and new OOo.
We should keep this in mind for the release notes and should update the
docu, help as soon as possible
I tried to add a paragraph summarizing this thread to the Release Notes:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/AOO+3.4+Release+Notes
Looks good, thanks.
FYI, I'm also considering to extend the ICU regexp matcher with the
bracket extension mentioned above if there is a chance that it gets into
upstream ICU.
There are good reasons that speak against it like
- the \< \> extension is unusual for a regexp engine
(see http://www.regular-expressions.info/refflavors.html)
- the \< for word start matching is already available in its more common
form \b
- the \> for word end matching can often be replaced by \W
- backslash escaping of non-ASCII characters should preferably be
literal escaping
On the other hand the older regexp dialect which has the bracket
extension has been available in many releases of OOo and we would like
to make the migration to AOO as smooth as possible.
Herbert
