=head1 DESCRIPTION
-This page describes the syntax of regular expressions in Perl. For a
-description of how to I<use> regular expressions in matching
-operations, plus various examples of the same, see discussions
-of C<m//>, C<s///>, C<qr//> and C<??> in L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
+This page describes the syntax of regular expressions in Perl.
+
+if you haven't used regular expressions before, a quick-start
+introduction is available in L<perlrequick>, and a longer tutorial
+introduction is available in L<perlretut>.
+
+For reference on how regular expressions are used in matching
+operations, plus various examples of the same, see discussions of
+C<m//>, C<s///>, C<qr//> and C<??> in L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like
+Operators">.
Matching operations can have various modifiers. Modifiers
that relate to the interpretation of the regular expression inside
such but instead control the terminal somehow: for example newline and
backspace are control characters. All characters with ord() less than
32 are most often classified as control characters (assuming ASCII,
-the ISO Latin character sets, and Unicode).
+the ISO Latin character sets, and Unicode), as is the character with
+the ord() value of 127 (C<DEL>).
=item graph
=item print
-Any alphanumeric or punctuation (special) character or space.
+Any alphanumeric or punctuation (special) character or the space character.
=item punct
the time when used on a similar string with 1000000 C<a>s. Be aware,
however, that this pattern currently triggers a warning message under
the C<use warnings> pragma or B<-w> switch saying it
-C<"matches the null string many times">):
+C<"matches null string many times in regex">.
On simple groups, such as the pattern C<< (?> [^()]+ ) >>, a comparable
effect may be achieved by negative look-ahead, as in C<[^()]+ (?! [^()] )>.
got <d is under the >
Here's another example: let's say you'd like to match a number at the end
-of a string, and you also want to keep the preceding of part the match.
+of a string, and you also want to keep the preceding part of the match.
So you write this:
$_ = "I have 2 numbers: 53147";
=head1 SEE ALSO
+L<perlrequick>.
+
+L<perlretut>.
+
L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
L<perlop/"Gory details of parsing quoted constructs">.