From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-04-17T00:35:04+09:00
Subject: Re: regular expressions

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arthur Chance" <{spamtrap}@qeng-ho.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 8:12 AM
Subject: Re: regular expressions


> Well, a long time ago, in a very different world, there was a pattern
> matching language called Snobol (or rather SNOBOL as punched cards
> didn't have lower case :-). 30+ years ago I used to use it for the
> sort of quick string manipulating hacks that Ruby and Perl often get
> used for today. SNOBOL had "patterns" which weren't exactly today's
> regexps but were very similar. I've often thought that a modern
> variation of Snobol patterns would make a more user friendly regexp
> syntax.
> 
> [5 minutes later and I've found my old SNOBOL4 language manual,
> copyright 1971. This takes me back.]

[snip interesting SNOBOL stuff]

First of all, it does my heart good to know that I am not 
actually the oldest person on this list. When you were
programming in SNOBOL, I was barely in sixth grade, and 
the only computers I knew of were in _Star Trek_ reruns.

More on-topic: I had an idea for "de-obfuscating" regexes
a year or more ago; and I may even have mentioned it on
the list. In fact, I think I did. Generally I wanted to
use a notation that was more like a programming language
(in a vein similar to the SNOBOL stuff you showed us)
which could (e.g.) be put into here-documents and compiled
into regular Ruby regexes.

But eventually I was convinced that the Rockit parser could
do everything I wanted to do (though in a somewhat different
fashion, no doubt). So I abandoned that idea.

I've never look at Rockit much. I assume it's in the RAA.
But I'd be curious to know what a SNOBOL hacker thinks
of it.


Thanks,
Hal