Regex - named group for subrutine

Hello everyone,

Is it possible to use DEFINE statement for regular expression with pcreCompile()? I building a big regular expression where I would like to use DEFINE to define a set of characters and then use only the name of the set for different actions in the pattern (like restrict double characters etc...) but it looks like pcreCompile can not handle DEFINE or am I doing something wrong?

I would like to compile something like this

(?(DEFINE)(?'foo'[a-z]))A\g'foo'

- define named group "foo" which represent range [a-z] (in my expression is much more longer and I would like to edit it only on one place not copy several times is I need to add something to the group...) but it self is not matching until called by the \g'foo' (I would like to use this in different part of the expression for different uses)

pcreCompile( (?(DEFINE)(?'foo'[a-z]))A\g'foo') doesn't work

Regards,

Miro