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Doc Bug #50417 Separation of PCRE Pattern Syntax chapters
Submitted: 2009-12-08 21:35 UTC Modified: 2010-01-06 20:43 UTC
Votes:1
Avg. Score:4.0 ± 0.0
Reproduced:1 of 1 (100.0%)
Same Version:1 (100.0%)
Same OS:0 (0.0%)
From: php at felixdd dot de Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: Documentation problem
PHP Version: Irrelevant OS:
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
 [2009-12-08 21:35 UTC] php at felixdd dot de
Description:
------------
Separation of the chapters of PCRE Pattern Syntax causes a lot of work to search for a specific pattern.

In a former version the chapter "Pattern Syntax" was one huge chapter.
http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php
Maybe a huge amount of information in one page is difficult to read, but now it's difficult to search for a specific syntax. 

As an example you want to know the meaning of (?: In one big chapter you can use the search function of the browser (Ctrl+F). But now one has to open each single page.

Even the general search function 
"search for [(?:  ] in the [online documentation]"
isn't helpful: no result.

Expected result:
----------------
Making again one big chapter isn't an option?
No? How about adding a very short form of the syntax to the list items in this page
http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php

i.e.

...
* Subpatterns: (), (?:, (?P<name>
...
* Back references: \n, (?P=name)
* Assertions: (?=, (?!, (?<=, (?<!
...



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 [2010-01-06 09:01 UTC] kalle@php.net
PDF versions of the manual are available for download which is much easier to search thru, but the separation of the syntax section will be kept as it is now.
 [2010-01-06 17:41 UTC] php at felixdd dot de
Do you really mean PDF? I didn't found any PDF version at php.net/download-docs.php. But there is a single HTML file version - which is all but handy. Opening/rendering takes ages, consumes a huge amount of memory and there is no way to only search in certain chapters. Also a PDF version would have the same problems.

There is also a Windows Help file format, but the reader can't search for phrases like "(?<!".
 [2010-01-06 18:02 UTC] bjori@php.net
You can download the pdf from http://docs.php.net/download-docs.php
 [2010-01-06 19:07 UTC] php at felixdd dot de
No, at least currently not. All mirrors I tried, I got a 404.
 
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