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Doc Bug #45256 Regular expression navigation regression
Submitted: 2008-06-13 07:32 UTC Modified: 2008-11-05 16:27 UTC
From: dclayton at serif dot com Assigned:
Status: Closed Package: Documentation problem
PHP Version: Irrelevant OS: N/A
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2008-06-13 07:32 UTC] dclayton at serif dot com 
Description:
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There was a change made to the regular expression documentation recently, whereby it is now 2 clicks to get to the "PCRE" modifiers and syntax. Normally a change like this wouldn't bother me, but regular expressions are a core part of web development and I use them extensively. Whenever I want to look up a regular expression, I often will start at one of the preg_* functions to check the argument order, etc., then go to the regex pattern parts of the documentation to check the expression itself.

In summary, this is somewhat subjective but I personally believe moving the pattern modifiers and syntax from the navigation pane you get in the regular expression functions docs was a regression in the site's navigation structure. I would sincerely appreciate it if some way could be found to move them back, as they are vitally useful and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were one of the busier pages on the site :)

Reproduce code:
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N/A

Expected result:
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N/A

Actual result:
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N/A

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 [2008-06-13 07:35 UTC] dclayton at serif dot com 
Actually strike that - it is now *3* clicks to get to pattern syntax :(
 [2008-06-13 15:11 UTC] philip@php.net 
The main pcre page is here:

  * http://php.net/book.pcre

It lists everything and all the preg_ pages link to it. However, there is a bug that on some mirrors has this:

  * http://php.net/pcre

Wrongly take us to:

  * http://php.net/ref.pcre

Instead of book.pcre... And there is already a bug report about having this within the sidebar although I'm unsure how deep we want the links to go there but: 

  * http://bugs.php.net/44735 (nav bar)
  * http://bugs.php.net/45060 (ref vs book)
 [2008-06-16 07:42 UTC] dclayton at serif dot com 
Yeah, I'm not saying I can't find the documentation - I just think it could be tweaked so that if you're at any of the reg ex function pages, you can get straight to pattern modifiers and syntax. 3 clicks to syntax is a hassle because it's a page you very often want to get to straight from the preg_* functions :)

It's not a huge deal though, if it's not going to change I'll just have to remember to bookmark the modifier/syntax pages. In general the php documentation is pretty damn good, much better than MSDN (blurgh!)
 [2008-11-05 16:27 UTC] vrana@php.net 
This bug has been fixed in the documentation's XML sources. Since the
online and downloadable versions of the documentation need some time
to get updated, we would like to ask you to be a bit patient.

Thank you for the report, and for helping us make our documentation better.
 
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