From: "Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)" <jonas@...>
Date: 2011-01-13T06:52:07+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:34449] Re: [Ruby 1.8-Feature#4239] Let's begin a talk for "1.8.8" -- How's needed for surviving 1.8?

2011/1/12 Zeno Davatz <redmine@ruby-lang.org>:
> So why was the Oniguruma-Patch never applied to 1.8.7 or 1.8.6 but then "some" functions of Oniguruma where copied to 1.9.2 but just "some". It seems that you really do not use regular expressions. We do use regular expressions in our own code because we have to parse lots of data (PDF files, XLS files, Wordfiles, XML files, etc.) and we have to detect patterns because that is what Ruby is good at. We really need regular expression as does Michael Fellinger. And Fellinger got burned. Read the post I linked above http://url.ba/00z0
[snip]

Look. ruby-1.9.2 happens to have another regexp engine, but it's
backward-compatible with 1.8.7, what do you want more ? The confusion
came because the onuguruma GEM was declaring to be forward-compatible
with 1.9.2, which is not.

If your parsing is so complicated that you need to use all the power
of oniguruma, then I suggest that you use the gem, or re-think your
solution to use a context-free parser like Trollop or Parslet.

In any cases, if 1.9 has some backward-incompatible changes, then no
1.8.X release can smooth the path more out. The current release is
really good. Now it's time for you to do the rest of the work and do
the transition :) If you want to be helpful, then make a list of
things that break during the transition.