> “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
regular expressions." Now they have two problems.”
Funny! And this is quite a thread I'm skimming over. I'm not totally
sure if it's about old programmers who won't/can't change, or regular
expressions. But I'll add my 2 cents:
Sometimes when scripting I'll search google for help with whatever
comparison I'm trying to do, and every once in a while the solution
involves a regular expression. I'll copy/paste/test and if it works I'm
done. It's not that I won't/can't understand regular expressions, it's
just that I really have no need to learn the details when I can easily
find what I need posted by someone else with a similar issue.
P.S. I've heard that you can tell if someone is really old if they type
two spaces after a period.
On 2/27/2020 8:25 AM, Pew, Curtis G wrote:
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://blog.codinghorror.com/regular-expressions-now-you-have-two-problems/
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
