`after` and `before` can be confusing, but I think it would be more confusing if it were the other way around.
On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 2:15 PM Sean McAfee <eef...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 6:11 PM yary <not....@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Perl 6 is doing the right thing. The dot matches any character. In >> this case, matching the final ':'. The next bit of the regex says the >> cursor has to be after 1:, and indeed, after matching the ':' the >> cursor is after '1:', so the substitution succeeds. >> > > My real use case, that I tried to provide a simplified example of, was to > process some pretty-printed JSON. Less simplified this time, I wanted to > change all "foo": "whatever" strings to "foo": "*". In Perl 5 I would have > done: > > s/(?<="foo": ")[^"]+/*/; > > Trying to express this in Perl 6, I thought "lookbehind" would naturally > translate to a "before" assertion: > > s/<?before '"foo": "'><-["]>+/*/; > > ...but that didn't work. Various other attempts led to the simplified > example I originally provided. > > Long story short, it seems that a Perl 5 (?<=...) lookbehind translates to > a Perl 6 <?after ...> assertion, and likewise a Perl 5 (?=...) lookahead > translates to a Perl 6 <?before ...> assertion. The terminology just > confused me due to my prior Perl 5 experience. > >
