Aug. 31, 2000
9:01 p.m.
Suggestion:
If there are fewer than 3 digits, it's a group.
Unless it begins with a 0 (that's what's documented today -- read the docs <wink>).
If there are exactly 3 digits and you have 100 or more groups, it's a group -- too bad, you lose octal number support. Use \x. :-)
The docs say you can't use backreferences for groups higher than 99.
If there are exactly 3 digits and you have at most 99 groups, it's an octal escape.
If we make the meaning depend on the number of preceding groups, we may as well emulate *all* of Perl's ugliness here.