> These things just are - written into the laws of the world. They are discovered - not invented. This applies only to the theoretical computer science regexes

> These things just are - written into the laws of the world. They are discovered - not invented. This applies only to the theoretical computer science regexes. The practical regexes are very different in this aspect. Practical regexes are neither discovered nor invented - they are constructed. The theoretical regexes are just the basis but on top of that there's a lot of features added. Some of them are just syntactic sugar for theoretical regexes but others actually make the language non-regular. Groups that match what previous named groups have matched are definitely in this category.