Well, if you're looking for snarky quotes try "EMACS is a wonderful operating system; all that it needs is a good editor."
While I don't like Perl, I use it by choice when it is the best tool for the jobs. I've certainly seen a lot of poorly written regexen, but I don't recall ever seeing Perl code that used regexen when there was a better way to do it. As for readability, Perl is certainly more readable than LISP. SNOBOL, Icon and languages influenced by them rely on words and quoted strings; the patterns tend to be more verbose but more readable than Eunix-style regexen. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Pew, Curtis G [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2020 11:25 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Rexx parse using period as placeholder On Feb 27, 2020, at 10:13 AM, Seymour J Metz <[email protected]> wrote: > > Don't confuse logic with habit; there is nothing illogical about regexen. > Yes, the syntax is clumsy and not nearly as readable as patterns in, e.g., > SNOBOL, but there's nothing magic about them, I could teach a bright > elementary school student to write simple regexen, although probably not to > read and write some of the more complicated ones I have dealt with. > > Now, not all change is progress, and if you were ranting against, e.g., C, I > might agree, but regexen do have redeeming social value. > It feels like we’re overdue for someone to reference the (in)famous quote on regular expressions: “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.” https://secure-web.cisco.com/1cBmBqnXDrtjAD9UaboIpO2GeHt_p8wHsGsycEXLkKmbWg3DUlg_l3bzLk5GIsPaRcSmNYwydJChsS7QrcUR53o_ys0dlgkNarMl50YsyLJaI-Qo3HvBK7Fp5d0IHo5QV-21D6p9N1JjwVI7js7Vz9ICMb-_U1z5rMLzFQRjDxGMYN2ODNSuqXkwasRtyb-2dY-RX7_-o_z_aih91piH00PiYrEXOcr6J3ojE2qiq_iPCyTY2fkrxZx7Kd-x3rZu5Otve-mYuZ4NEFCovLoRlZPef6MS7iZIi2Cq9ifwgQI2zga4uRK1VwcprVD65ruzHqKeYry7KAsB1ikzqmnd7ZShSQ78vFqN4IUgp58SNM29wJYK9W2rFClMM9d5vJZEdqJMl0HeSiGQR8cGLxlH8bg/https%3A%2F%2Fblog.codinghorror.com%2Fregular-expressions-now-you-have-two-problems%2F Often when I use regular expressions I get the feeling there’s a more elegant solution trying to escape in there somewhere, but I haven’t been able to come up with it yet. I suppose I should google SNOBOL; I’ve heard of it but never really investigated it. -- Pew, Curtis G [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
