This article explains how it works. A sidebar explains the academic terminology that I didn't use in the article . This module, Regex.pm implements the scheme described in the article . This program, grep.pl implements a version of Unix grep in Perl without using Perl's built-in regexes. This program, demo.pl demonstrates that for some tasks, the Regex.pm library is a whole lot faster than Perl's builtin regexes.
Full details are available .
There was an error in one of the illustrations in The Perl Journal . Eight lines of code suffice to add the . metacharacter . Send me mail.