forcing tabs in regex

[psychoticRabbit]

On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 01:06:30 UTC, dark777 wrote:
> Regex validates years bisexto and not bisextos in format:
> const std::regex 
> pattern(R"(^(?:(?:(0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])([-/.])(0?[1-9]|1[0-2]|[Jj](?:an|u[nl])|[Mm]a[ry]|[Aa](?:pr|ug)|[Ss]ep|[Oo]ct|[Nn]ov|[Dd]ec|[Ff]eb)|(29|30)([-/.])(0?[13-9]|1[0-2]|[Jj](?:an|u[nl])|[Mm]a[ry]|[Aa](?:pr|ug)|[Ss]ep|[Oo]ct|[Nn]ov|[Dd]ec)|(31)([-/.])(0?[13578]|1[02]|[Jj]an|[Mm]a[ry]|[Jj]ul|[Aa]ug|[Oo]ct|[Dd]ec))(?:\2|\5|\8)(0{2,3}[1-9]|0{1,2}[1-9]\d|0?[1-9]\d{2}|[1-9]\d{3})|(29)([-/.])(0?2|[Ff]eb)\12(\d{1,2}(?:0[48]|[2468][048]|[13579][26])|(?:0?[48]|[13579][26]|[2468][048])00))$)");
>
> this regex above validates the formats through backreferences.
>

what is this evil dark magic?