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> I'm pretty sure the questioner wasn't asking "how do I validate a regular expression" because he would have asked that. In my experience, people sometimes as
by thereare5lights 7y ago
> I'm pretty sure the questioner wasn't asking "how do I validate a regular expression" because he would have asked that.
In my experience, people sometimes ask for how to solve the more immediate detail they’re working on rather than the broader problem.
- NieDzejkob 7y agoSee also: the XY problem [0][1]. [0]: http://xyproblem.info/ http://xyproblem.info/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
- corobo 7y agoThis came up recently. Going to start calling it the XYZ problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20861806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20861806 Edit: page refreshed and sure enough the sibling comment calls it out by name Edit2: Called it the XYZ problem: https://cohan.io/the-xyz-problem/ https://cohan.io/the-xyz-problem/