4 ms·
> If they don't work the way you want, you just keep refining it. This is easy if you actually test your regex in real data. There can be edge cases in both yo
by RHSeeger 1y ago
> If they don't work the way you want, you just keep refining it. This is easy if you actually test your regex in real data.
There can be edge cases in both your data and in the regular expression itself. It's not as easy as "write your code correctly and test it". Although that's true of programming in general, regular expressions tend to add an extra "layer" to it.
I don't know if you meant it to be that way, but your comment sounds a lot like "it's easy to program without bugs if you test your code". It's pretty much a given that that's not the case.
- phatskat 1y agoI didn’t get the “it’s easy to program without bugs” vibe at all, and OP even mentioned an edge case that took their parser down (BUG!) Neither the human nor the AI will catch every edge case, especially if the data can be irregular. I think the point they were making is more along the lines of “when you do it yourself, you can understand and refine and fix it more easily.” If an LLM had done my regular expressions early in my career, I’d have only !maybe! have learned just what I saw and needed to know. I’m almost certain the first time I saw (?:…) I’d have given up and leaned into the AI heavily.