Word.ws English Dictionary

lookbehind

lookbehind noun: the analysis of the preceding characters before the regular expression is matched.

Noun

lookbehind (countable and uncountable, plural lookbehinds)

  1. (regular expressions) The analysis of the preceding characters before the regular expression is matched.
    • [There] are times when it's useful to be able to look to the left of the current position being considered to see what the past had to say about a particular pattern. That is the purpose of lookbehinds.2004, Mehran Habibi, Java Regular Expressions: Taming the java.util.regex Engine

Forms of lookbehind

plurallookbehinds

Origin of lookbehind

Deverbal from look behind.

Phrases with lookbehind

Questions about lookbehind

What does lookbehind mean?
Lookbehind means the analysis of the preceding characters before the regular expression is matched.
What part of speech is lookbehind?
Lookbehind is a noun.
What is the plural of lookbehind?
The plural of lookbehind is lookbehinds.

Words near lookbehind in the dictionary

  1. lookatcha
  2. lookatchu
  3. lookback
  4. lookback time
  5. lookbacks
  6. lookbehind
  7. lookbehinds
  8. lookbook
  9. lookbooked
  10. lookbooking
  11. lookbooks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lookbehind (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “lookbehind.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lookbehind. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.