I haven't used PHP, but is this somewhat like how Perl has regular expressions embedded in the syntax, while Python (for example) uses them via a library? PHP i

I haven't used PHP, but is this somewhat like how Perl has regular expressions embedded in the syntax, while Python (for example) uses them via a library? PHP is a DSL for web programming and Perl is (arguably) a DSL for Unix system administration, so it is probably worth including those in the core language. If so, it also means that complaining that Java (or Haskell, etc.) doesn't have HTML embedded in it is like complaining that C can't have embedded makefiles.