I've been tossing an idea around in my head, and I've not yet decided if
this is the most brilliant idea I've ever come up with:), or perhaps the
lamest. I'm sure it would be cool, but that doesn't mean it should be
pursued. I'm going to throw this one out in the open, and if it's not
shot full of holes, I'll see if can RFC it.
A string is conceptually a list of characters.
The perl pattern engine is designed to recognize patterns in strings
(i.e. a list of characters)
Question: Is there value in extending the regex/pattern engine to
support matching patterns in a list of foobars?
I can see this taking two forms (beyond the strings we have today).
One is matching number patterns (fibonaci, etc), and the other is
matching lists of objects. The goal here would be to leverage all the
GENERIC knowledge/power such as +, *, ? {x,y} [] | (?=) etc., and use
this power where the fundamental thingy being matched is not a
character.
Now, if you want the syntax for this, that's an entirely separate issue
(well, not really). But let's start with the question of weather this
is Einsteinian or ElmerFuddian.
--
David Corbin
Mach Turtle Technologies, Inc.
http://www.machturtle.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
