Improve nre documentation (fixes #9470)

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/lib/impure/nre.nim b/lib/impure/nre.nim
index 985913a88..58594f054 100644
--- a/lib/impure/nre.nim
+++ b/lib/impure/nre.nim
@@ -23,6 +23,12 @@ export options
 ##
 ## A regular expression library for Nim using PCRE to do the hard work.
 ##
+## For documentation on how to write patterns, there exists `the official PCRE
+## pattern documentation
+## <https://www.pcre.org/original/doc/html/pcrepattern.html>`_. You can also
+## search the internet for a wide variety of third-party documentation and
+## tools.
+##
 ## **Note**: If you love ``sequtils.toSeq`` we have bad news for you. This
 ## library doesn't work with it due to documented compiler limitations. As
 ## a workaround, use this:
@@ -70,7 +76,10 @@ type
     ## comment".``
     ##
     ## ``pattern: string``
-    ##     the string that was used to create the pattern.
+    ##     the string that was used to create the pattern. For details on how
+    ##     to write a pattern, please see `the official PCRE pattern
+    ##     documentation.
+    ##     <https://www.pcre.org/original/doc/html/pcrepattern.html>`_
     ##
     ## ``captureCount: int``
     ##     the number of captures that the pattern has.
@@ -126,6 +135,12 @@ type
     ## Convention <http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/pcresyntax.3.html#NEWLINE_CONVENTION>`_
     ## sections of the `PCRE syntax
     ## manual <http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/pcresyntax.3.html>`_.
+    ##
+    ## Some of these options are not part of PCRE and are converted by nre
+    ## into PCRE flags. These include ``NEVER_UTF``, ``ANCHORED``,
+    ## ``DOLLAR_ENDONLY``, ``FIRSTLINE``, ``NO_AUTO_CAPTURE``,
+    ## ``JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT``, ``U``, ``NO_STUDY``. In other PCRE wrappers, you
+    ## will need to pass these as seperate flags to PCRE.
     pattern*: string  ## not nil
     pcreObj: ptr pcre.Pcre  ## not nil
     pcreExtra: ptr pcre.ExtraData  ## nil