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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

backreference en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (General-American) audio

Etymology

From back + reference.

Meanings

  1. (qualifier:regular expressions) An item in a regular expression equivalent to the text matched by an earlier pattern in the expression.
    • Path traversal occurs when directory backreferences are used in a path to gain access to the parent folder of a subfolder. 2005, Ivan Ristic, Apache security:
    • The third part of the regular expression, \1, is the backreference and tells ColdFusion to refer back to the first subexpression[…] 2003, Rob Brooks-Bilson, Programming ColdFusion MX:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
backreferences Number=Plur lexicographic
back-reference alternative lexicographic

backreference en · VERB

Pronunciation

  • (General-American) audio

Etymology

From back + reference.

Meanings

  1. (qualifier:regular expressions, transitive) To access (the text matched by an earlier pattern in a regular expression).
    • It doesn't change what the part matches, so /\d+/ and /(\d+)/ will still match as many digits as possible, but in the latter case they will be remembered in a special variable to be backreferenced later. 2012, Tom Christiansen, brian d foy^([sic]), Larry Wall, Programming Perl, page 46:
    • By wrapping it in parentheses, the attributes can be reused by backreferencing this part of the pattern[…] 2009, Larry Ullman, Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide, page 237:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
backreferencing Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
backreferenced Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
backreferenced Tense=Past lexicographic
back-reference alternative lexicographic
backreferences Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic