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I'd like to clarify that my position isn't about "not understanding regular expressions". Sure, it could help people who don't. But even for people like me: I r

I'd like to clarify that my position isn't about "not understanding regular expressions". Sure, it could help people who don't. But even for people like me: I read the O'Reilly regex pocket book and other materials, I studied formal regular languages during college, built a basic lexer/parser for a senior project, I've written no shortage of simple and complicated regexes in application code in the workplace, and once in a conference lecture I was the first audience member to recognize and shout out when the speaker quizzed which commonplace file format the given gnarly full-page regex matched. I'll never be up there with Brian Kernighan[0], but I know my way around regex at least as well as what I feel is reasonable to expect and accommodate from the average developer. My position is that even with a background in regexes that's a lot deeper than just Googling and putzing on Regex101.com, traditional regex syntax is still a frustrating time sink that's hard to get correct without more trial-and-error than feels intrinsically necessary. The syntax provides zero opportunity to discover there's a more effective way to perform a task. I have trouble identifying a compelling value proposition for traditional syntax besides familiarity and natural serializability, and the fact that it gets the job done at all. I don't believe traditional regex syntax is the optimal way to accomplish text pattern matching tasks in the workplace, and I'm open to other tooling that makes it success simpler and more reliable. People misuse regexes all the time (examples like the one you linked are almost tropes at this point), but I don't think that's compelling justification on its own for preserving the status quo. [0] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/beautiful.html https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/be...

btilly 6y ago
My only complaint about the regex syntax is that it does not allow you to separate things out with whitespace, or add comments about what the chunked units. The x modifier fixes both. What you traditionally see with a complex RE for a complex pattern is the same as what you traditionally see with someone writing complex SQL statements on a single line. Stop trying to treat it like a black box, and treat it as a programming language in its own right. Use whitespace, indentation, and comments (when necessary) to communicate intent as well as just to make it do its job. Other than that, regular expressions say what they mean and mean what they say very concisely directly. Particularly the PCRE variants of the language. I consider that conciseness and directness a virtue.

btilly 6y ago

My only complaint about the regex syntax is that it does not allow you to separate things out with whitespace, or add comments about what the chunked units. The x modifier fixes both. What you traditionally see with a complex RE for a complex pattern is the same as what you traditionally see with someone writing complex SQL statements on a single line. Stop trying to treat it like a black box, and treat it as a programming language in its own right. Use whitespace, indentation, and comments (when necessary) to communicate intent as well as just to make it do its job. Other than that, regular expressions say what they mean and mean what they say very concisely directly. Particularly the PCRE variants of the language. I consider that conciseness and directness a virtue.