The third part of the regular expression, \1, is the backreference and tells ColdFusion to refer back to the first subexpression[…]
Source: wiktionary
Backreference
Synonyms for "backreference"
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4 total sentences available.
Path traversal occurs when directory backreferences are used in a path to gain access to the parent folder of a subfolder.
Source: wiktionary
By wrapping it in parentheses, the attributes can be reused by backreferencing this part of the pattern[…]
Source: wiktionary
It doesn't change what the part matches, so /\d+/ and /(\d+)/ will still match as many digits as possible, but in the latter case they will be remembered in a special variable to be backreferenced later.
Source: wiktionary
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.