regex - Why isn't there a regular expression standard?

Question

I know there is the perl regex that is sort of a minor de facto standard, but why hasn't anyone come up with a universal set of standard symbols, syntax and behaviors?

Answer 1

There is a standard by IEEE associated with the POSIX effort. The real question is "why doesn't everyone follow it"? The answer is probably that it is not quite as complex as PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) with respect to greedy matching and what not.