From: Timothy Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2006-07-31T09:21:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Howto Delete 3 Leftmost Characters

Jeff Pritchard wrote:
> Esteban Manchado =?iso-8859-1?Q?Vel=E1zquez?= wrote:
>   
>> ...snip...
>> That is, "remove, from the beginning of the line, '#ip' followed by one 
>> or
>> more space characters (be them spaces, tabs or whatever)".> 
>> ...snip...
>>     Regards,
>>     
>
> Reading this explanation of the regexp that was provided reminded me 
> again of a question that has been haunting me for awhile.  Has anyone 
> written an "English language to Regexp" converter?
>
> It seems to me that for relatively simple cases it should be relatively 
> easy to set up something similar to the way most email apps do rule 
> building for filtering messages, with a drop down list of "contains, 
> starts with, doesn't contain, ends with, ...) and a couple of buttons 
> for adding/removing another line of such stuff.  Sort of a wizard for 
> building RegExp.
>
> Unless you write two or three RegExp's a day, it seems nearly impossible 
> to remember this arcane but useful syntax.  Being able to write them in 
> plain English or build one with some simple drop downs and check boxes 
> etc. would certainly save me some pain on occasion.  I've searched for 
> something like this before but never found anything.
>
> jp
>
>   

Sounds like a Ruby Quiz to me!


However, I've used a variety of these GUI-based regex builders in the 
past and never found them to much more than a curiosity. The regular 
expression syntax is so precise and exact that I find it frustrating to 
have to pick through all the choices and click things. Invariably I end 
up just writing the damn regex by hand. I would think that an English 
language equivalent to regex syntax would simply replace 
hard-to-remember regular expressions with hard-to-remember English phrases.

Regular expressions are no harder to learn than any other programming 
language. You need a good reference (for me it has to be on paper) and 
some practice. That's all.