From: Nikolai Weibull <mailing-lists.ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2004-11-18T23:33:03+09:00
Subject: Re: About Regular Expressions

* Jason Sweat <jason.sweat@gmail.com> [Nov 18, 2004 15:20]:
> > > Lately there have been a bunch of posts on this list about regular
> > > expressions in Ruby and people seem to cry wolf whenever they
> > > don't get them quite right.  By crying wolf here I mean that they
> > > suspect a bug.  That's most often the same as blaming core-dumps
> > > on the operating system.  It's time that people try to reason
> > > about what they've actually written and look at the documentation
> > > (which may be too limited?) before complaining here.

> > This is terrible. Not only is it unfair to disenfranchise newbies
> > who, for obvious reasons, would struggle with regular expressions,
> > but the whole premise if false. (ASFICT) I am responsible for most
> > if not all the latest R.E. posts. And I do not recall once
> > suspecting a bug. I have asked about extending features (such as
> > Regexp.arity) and whether certain existing features might not be
> > more useful if they worked differently (like #scan).  Never did I
> > cry wolf. (For a taste of your own medicine) Perhaps it's time for
> > you to try to read more carefully.

> I too brought up a regex question recently.  My issue was that I
> understood how a particular regex worked in other languages (Perl,
> PHP), but was unable to implement in Ruby.  I was specifically seeking
> advice on how to do it "the Ruby way".  If this is not the appropriate
> forum for that, where else would be?

This is the right forum, I didn't argue with that.

> In most cases like this, it seems to me if you feel the question is
> too naive, you are free to ignore the thread, and someone who has more
> pity or patience can help the individual who posted.  Trying to throw
> up barriers to posting questions seems like isolationism that is not
> very characteristic of this list (at least from the brief time I have
> been lurking here).

I seem to need a couple of lessons on interacting with other humans...

Your case is typical of the problems I felt I had seen coming up on this
list these past few weeks.  What I sought was a solution to this problem
(not the questions as such, but the fact that they were asked in the
first place).  It seems that this wasn't made clear enough in my
posting.  As I've stated in other replies, I think that here is a need
for better and more accessible documentation for using regular
expressions, as many seem to have problems writing and using them.
	nikolai

--
::: name: Nikolai Weibull    :: aliases: pcp / lone-star / aka :::
::: born: Chicago, IL USA    :: loc atm: Gothenburg, Sweden    :::
::: page: www.pcppopper.org  :: fun atm: gf,lps,ruby,lisp,war3 :::
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}