From: Nikolai Weibull <mailing-lists.ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-11-29T03:08:45+09:00
Subject: Re: String#to_rx ?

Austin Ziegler wrote:

> On 11/27/05, Nikolai Weibull
> <mailing-lists.ruby-talk@rawuncut.elitemail.org> wrote:

> > Jeff Wood wrote:

> > > The Perl syntax he proposed is a hideous mess of line noise ( no
> > > surprises).

> > So you think /(?:abc)/ is easier to read than /[abc]/?  How about
> > /\w+\s*=\s*\w+/ versus /<word> = <word>/w (or
> > /<word><ws>=<ws><word>/ without 'w' modifier and assuming word =
> > /\w+/)?

> No, but I don't think that they're regular expressions at that point.

No, but what we call regular expressions aren't in any way regular
either.  Actually, it depends on how this is actually done.  In Perl 6,
<word> will call the regex in the current grammar called 'word', so
that's certainly not regular.  If <word> is simply substituted by
whatever 'word' is defined to in the current grammar, then that doesn't
change anything.

> I wouldn't be opposed to a parser-literal type being included in Ruby
> if done right (because that's *really* what Larry proposed),

Yes.

> but I would be opposed to rewriting Ruby regex into the Perl6 format.

Why?

(In Perl 6 (vaporware, I know), the Perl 5 syntax will still be
available.)

        nikolai

-- 
Nikolai Weibull: now available free of charge at http://bitwi.se/!
Born in Chicago, IL USA; currently residing in Gothenburg, Sweden.
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}