[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #54592] regexprep gets confused when parentheses should be processed

[Mike Miller]

Follow-up Comment #7, bug #54592 (project octave):

Can someone test the same, with an unmatched opening bracket? For example


regexprep ('tes(t', '(', '')
regexprep ('tes[t', '[', '')


It looks to me like both Perl and sed treat an unmatched ']' the same as '\]',
but an unmatched '[' is an error. This is specifically documented in the Perl
RE syntax as an exception. The ']' character is called a "sometimes
metacharacter", but the '()' characters are always metacharacters.

However, POSIX extended regular expression syntax seems to allow a ')' to be
interpreted as a normal character when there is no corresponding '('. So under
POSIX ERE rules, ')' is also a "sometimes metacharacter", but not under Perl
RE rules.

This can be confimed with grep


$ echo 'tes)t' | grep -E ')'
tes)t
$ echo 'tes)t' | grep -P ')'
grep: unmatched parentheses


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