On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 5:30 AM, Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohn...@gmail.com> wrote: > But don't tell me for a *SECOND* that a colorizer, and a > damn good one, can not be written utilizing regexps, because > you're either wrong, or you're scared, or you're ignorant, > or you're all of the above!
It might well be able to *utilize* regexps (as Terry showed, the one in idlelib apparently does use them), but very few modern programming languages can be fully and correctly defined within the limits of regexp syntax. For instance, how can you recognize and thus colorize assignments differently from name references, to distinguish between "foo = 1" and "foo == 1"? Can you do that with a regexp? And there's plenty more syntax that's tricky to define. I might be wrong, and I might be ignorant, but I'm not scared. I know what a regular expression can and can't do, and it's not fear to avoid using them for jobs they can't do. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
