Was trying to get words with consecutive repeated letters occurring twice or thrice. Not able find a way to use quantifier and capture group using ERE
$ grep --version | head -n1
grep (GNU grep) 2.25
$ # consecutive repeated letters occurring twice
$ grep -m5 -xiE '[a-z]*([a-z])\1[a-z]*[a-z]*([a-z])\2[a-z]*' /usr/share/dict/words
Abbott
Annabelle
Annette
Appaloosa
Appleseed
$ # no output for this, why?
$ grep -m5 -xiE '([a-z]*([a-z])\2[a-z]*){2}' /usr/share/dict/words
Works with -P though
$ grep -m5 -xiP '([a-z]*([a-z])\2[a-z]*){2}' /usr/share/dict/words
Abbott
Annabelle
Annette
Appaloosa
Appleseed
$ grep -m5 -xiP '([a-z]*([a-z])\2[a-z]*){3}' /usr/share/dict/words
Chattahoochee
McConnell
Mississippi
Mississippian
Mississippians
Thanks Casimir et Hippolyte for coming up with simpler input and regex to test this behavior
$ echo 'aazbb' | grep -E '(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){2}' || echo 'No match'
aazbb
$ echo 'aazbbycc' | grep -E '(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){2}([a-z])\3[a-z]*' || echo 'No match'
aazbbycc
$ echo 'aazbbycc' | grep -P '(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){3}' || echo 'No match'
aazbbycc
$ # failing case
$ echo 'aazbbycc' | grep -E '(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){3}' || echo 'No match'
No match
Same behavior seen with sed as well
$ sed --version | head -n1
sed (GNU sed) 4.2.2
$ echo 'aazbb' | sed -E '/(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){2}/! s/.*/No match/'
aazbb
$ echo 'aazbbycc' | sed -E '/(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){2}([a-z])\3[a-z]*/! s/.*/No match/'
aazbbycc
$ # failing case
$ echo 'aazbbycc' | sed -E '/(([a-z])\2[a-z]*){3}/! s/.*/No match/'
No match
Related search links, I checked some of them, but didn't get anything close to this question
If this is solved in newer version of grep or sed, let me know. Also, if the issue is seen in non-GNU implementations
I filed an issue https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26864 and the manual is now updated to reflect such issues.
From https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/grep.html#Known-Bugs:
Back-references can greatly slow down matching, as they can generate exponentially many matching possibilities that can consume both time and memory to explore. Also, the POSIX specification for back-references is at times unclear. Furthermore, many regular expression implementations have back-reference bugs that can cause programs to return incorrect answers or even crash, and fixing these bugs has often been low-priority: for example, as of 2020 the GNU C library bug database contained back-reference bugs 52, 10844, 11053, 24269 and 25322, with little sign of forthcoming fixes. Luckily, back-references are rarely useful and it should be little trouble to avoid them in practical applications.