On 6/30/10 7:14 AM, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
On Tue, 2010-06-29, Stephen Hansen wrote:
On 6/29/10 5:41 AM, Roy Smith wrote:
Nobody<nob...@nowhere.com> wrote:
And what about regular expressions?
What about them? As the saying goes:
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think
"I know, I'll use regular expressions."
Now they have two problems.
That's silly. RE is a good tool. Like all good tools, it is the right
tool for some jobs and the wrong tool for others.
There's nothing silly about it.
It is an exaggeration though: but it does represent a good thing to keep
in mind.
Not an exaggeration: it's an absolute. It literally says that any time
you try to solve a problem with a regex, (A) it won't solve the problem
and (B) it will in itself become a problem. And it doesn't tell you
why: you're supposed to accept or reject this without thinking.
How can that be a good thing to keep in mind?
That it speaks in absolutes is what makes it an exaggeration. Yes, it
literally says something kind of like that (Your 'a' is a
mischaracterization).
It's still a very good thing to keep in mind.
Its a "saying" -- a proverb, an expression. Since when are the wise
remarks of our ancient forefathers literal? Not last I checked.
Reading into a saying as not a guide or suggestion or cautionary tale
but instead a doctrinal absolute is where we run into problems, not in
the repeating of them.
--
... Stephen Hansen
... Also: Ixokai
... Mail: me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io
... Blog: http://meh.ixokai.io/
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
