From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2001-11-22T03:58:12+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26060] Re: ANN: regex engine development (was: Re: Why not xmlparser?)

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, David Alan Black wrote:

> Hello --
>
> On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Bill Kelly wrote:
>
> > That  /foo (*followed-by* bar)/rx  is starting to look pretty nice I
> > must say.
>
> Funny, I find it almost unreadable.  Same with named captured
> substrings, etc.  To me it's sort of like starting a piece of music
> with:
>
>   (*the-note-below-middle-C*)
>
> instead of
>
>      0
>    -|----
>    -|----
>    ------
>    ------
>    ------
>
> (That's bass clef, by the way :-)
>
> I guess over the years I've trained my brain to parse regular
> expressions in such a way that having them described in English is
> actually a fairly major impediment to my understanding them.
>
> I have no axe to grind about this (as long as it doesn't catch on :-)
> Just noting in passing that people have different takes on it.

Yes, the names must be concise, and also if /.../r were used, this
stuff would be optional.  Automatic translation between the forms
should be relatively easy.  (Ok, that's a bit like "Clearly, ",
"It can be shown that " and friends!)
>
>
> David

	Hugh