Simplifying a regular expression using backreferences

[TenTen]

hi, I'm a regex beginer and I want to know if with backreferences \1 I can reduce the ip test regex that I found on a web site :

\b (25[0-5] |2 [0-4] [0-9]| [01]? [0-9][0-9]?)\. (25[0-5] |2 [0-4] [0-9]| [01]? [0-9][0-9]?)\. (25[0-5] |2 [0-4] [0-9]| [01]? [0-9][0-9]?)\. (25[0-5] |2 [0-4] [0-9]| [01]? [0-9][0-9]?)\b

By something like that :

 \b (25[0-5] |2 [0-4] [0-9]| [01]? [0-9][0-9]?)\.)\1\1 (25[0-5] |2 [0-4] [0-9]| [01]? [0-9][0-9]?)\b?

I ask that in aim of understand backreferences thank you for answer me.

(@^_^@)

[pbmods]

Heya, Ten. Welcome to TSDN!

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[TenTen]

ok, sorry for that ...

[pbmods]

Heya, Ten.

That should work, assuming that you want the first three octets to be identical. Backreferences match the result of the rule, not the rule itself.

[TenTen]

ok if I understand exactly what you say, if the first octet is 175 with backreference the second and third term are 175 too ...

this is not what I want but at this time backreference were easier now

thank you for the help

cya