Atomic operators

This proposal introduces atomic operators to ECMAScript regular expressions, providing fine-grained control over backtracking behavior. It aims to improve performance and prevent catastrophic backtracking in complex pattern matching scenarios.

Key Features

• Atomic Groups ((?>…)) — Matches a pattern but discards backtracking information upon success, preventing re-evaluation of alternatives if subsequent parts fail.
• Possessive Quantifiers (*+, ++, ?+, {n}+, etc.) — Greedy quantifiers that do not backtrack if the rest of the pattern fails, offering syntactic sugar over atomic groups.
• Backtracking Control — Enables developers to optimize regex performance by eliminating unnecessary backtracking, similar to features in Perl, PCRE, and other regex engines.
• No Syntax Conflicts — Designed to avoid conflicts with existing ECMAScript regex syntax in both Unicode (u) and non-Unicode modes.

Philosophy

The proposal follows ECMAScript's evolution to align with established regex features from other languages, prioritizing performance and developer control without breaking existing behavior.