On May 26, Patrick R. Michaud said:

        <commit>  N       backtracking fails completely
<cut> N remove what matched up to this point from the string
        <after P> N       we must be after the pattern P
        <!after P>        N       we must NOT be after the pattern P
        <before P>        N       we must be before the pattern P
        <!before P>       N       we must NOT be before the pattern P

As with ':words', etc., I'm not sure that these qualify as "tokens"
when parsing the regex -- the tokens are actually "<" or "<!" and

I'm curious if <commit> and <cut> "capture" anything. They don't start with '?', so following the guidelines, it would appear they capture, but that doesn't make sense. Should they be written as <?commit> and <?cut>, or is the fact that they capture silently ignored because they're not consuming anything?

Same thing with <null> and <prior>. And with <after P> and <before P>. It should be assumed that <!after P> doesn't capture because it can only capture if P matches, in which case <!after P> fails.

So, what's the deal?

--
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