From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-01-17T11:42:19+09:00
Subject: Re: regex

Hi --

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Tom Allison wrote:

>
>> 
>> AND here's a completely new regexp engine coming for 2.0 - fun for the 
>> whole family.
>> 
>> That said, although it's undesirable, noone's obliged to be completely 
>> PCRE-compatible, and it always pays to take five minutes to read the (IMO 
>> pretty clear as far as regexps are concerned) documentation.
>> 
>
> Considering that PCRE is pretty much a language in itself, it would make life 
> a hell of a lot easier if there was at least some effort to either stick to 
> the established norms of regex engines or at least avoid treading on them in 
> the name of being different.  regexp isn't trivial, making it more varied 
> from language to language isn't going to help matters much.

Then you'll have to blame Perl, for breaking away from sed :-)
There's really never been one regex syntax, across all these various
languages and utilities; it's a very, very unlikely area for
uniformity.  In any case, Perl didn't necessarily get everything right
-- for example, it's nice to have anchors for all possible
combinations of start/end and string/line, as Ruby does.  (Maybe
recent Perls do too; I'm not sure.)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net

"Ruby for Rails", from Manning Publications, coming April 2006!
http://www.manning.com/books/black