On 9/17/2020 6:56 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 8:54 AM Ben Rudiak-Gould <[email protected]> wrote:
>> This is a terrible idea.
>>
>> No one should ever be trying to extract data from strings that are obviously 
>> meant for human consumption, like "It is 11:45 PM".
>>
>> I'll grant you that it's sometimes necessary. But it needs to be approached 
>> very carefully. You need to use a --porcelain flag if available, you need to 
>> check that the actual output format matches what you expect, and you 
>> definitely need to be able to specify where substring matching stops in more 
>> ways than "int or float or string".
>>
>> The last thing Python needs is a built-in language feature that makes 
>> hacking together these sorts of parsers seem easy and fun. Especially when 
>> it has no way to control backtracking or to specify any but a few trivial 
>> restrictions on what can end up in the output variables.
>>
> Python is an excellent language for text manipulation, and text
> manipulation is an incredibly useful real-world operation. I don't see
> what you're complaining at.
>
> ChrisA
I don't either.  This could be incredibly useful for simple string extraction.  
Obviously, there are situations where regex is a much better option, but why 
object to a simple option for simple problems?

--Edwin
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