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backreference. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
backreference, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
backreference in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
backreference you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From back + reference.
Pronunciation
Noun
backreference (plural backreferences)
- (regular expressions) An item in a regular expression equivalent to the text matched by an earlier pattern in the expression.
2003, Rob Brooks-Bilson, Programming ColdFusion MX:The third part of the regular expression, \1, is the backreference and tells ColdFusion to refer back to the first subexpression
2005, Ivan Ristic, Apache security:Path traversal occurs when directory backreferences are used in a path to gain access to the parent folder of a subfolder.
Verb
backreference (third-person singular simple present backreferences, present participle backreferencing, simple past and past participle backreferenced)
- (regular expressions, transitive) To access (the text matched by an earlier pattern in a regular expression).
2009, Larry Ullman, Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide, page 237:By wrapping it in parentheses, the attributes can be reused by backreferencing this part of the pattern
2012, Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall, Programming Perl, page 46: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.