Phrase guide

catastrophic backtracking

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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1

noun

Meaning 1

An excessively large amount of backtracking that occurs with certain regular expressions, due to an exponentially large number of possible matching paths to check.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: uncountable

Qualifier: regular expressions

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: runaway backtracking

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

From catastrophic + backtracking.