From: Simon Strandgaard <neoneye@...>
Date: 2004-03-01T18:54:57+09:00
Subject: Re: perl6 grammar rules in ruby

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 02:11:52 -0600, Charles Comstock wrote:
[snip]
> I think the lack of subroutine calls from the ruby regex engine would 
> make it difficult to program outside of the interpreter.  

I am working on a regexp engine, written entirely in Ruby. 
Mark Sparshatt is working on a perl6 parser for the engine. 
We plan to support ruby code inside regexp.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/aeditor/

What really drives me crazy, is that I keep thinking: That Ruby will 
have perl6 regexp, even long before Perl gets them ;-)
Anyway its just syntactical sugar.. there is also an XML flavor.


> Clearly the idea of including a bare regex system in 
> the language is very powerful, as we have already included it in the 
> language, but a grammar adds even more power and seems equally 
> important.  Plus if it is implemented correctly, it clearly extends to 
> allowing many meta functions across ruby if the ruby grammar is 
> specified internally.

At some point Ruby will switch it regexp engine from gnu to oniguruma.
Then an engine which is gnu compatible may become in handy.

At the moment I am struggling with nested quantifiers.. (yes, I have been
busy with this task for more than 30 days). My goal is to pass ok in more
than 95% of the regexp-testcases in rubicon. Last time I checked, I used a
conceptual wrong design, but managed to pass 92.5% out of 1652 assertions. 


> I'm thinking about submitting an RCR on this, but thought I would ask 
> everyone what they thought?
> 

Not sure if I understand the proposal?

--
Simon Strandgaard