Richard Proctor wrote:
>
>I think what is needed is something along the line of :
>
> $re = qz{ '(' \$re ')'
> | \$re \$re
> | [^()]+
> };
>
>Where qz is some hypothetical new quoting syntax
Well, we currently have qr{}, and ??{} does something like your \$re.
Warning: radical ideas ahead.
What would be useful, would be to leave REs the hell alone; they're
great as-is, and are only getting hairier and hairier. What would be
useful, would be to create a new non-regular pattern-matching/parsing
"language" within Perl, that combines the best of Perl REs, lex,
SNOBOL, Icon, state machines, and what have you.
$string =~ qz<<PARSE_THE_HELL_OUT_OF_THIS;
^(\d+) => $start_num F:No_Num # Start with a number
-(\d|) => $end_num F:One_Num # Look for an end num
{$start_num > $end_num?} S:Got_Range # comparison
No_Num: (\$\w+) => $start_var S:Its_A_Var
exit (status=error yada yada)
One_Num: etc etc
PARSE_THE_HELL_OUT_OF_THIS
This new sub-language would, like SNOBOL, allow you to piece together
patterns into powerful expressions, would be more readable than Perl's
line-noise expressions (which are only getting worse with (?this) and
(?that)!), would allow recursive processing, maybe even looping.
Now _that_ would rule :-)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric J. Roode, [EMAIL PROTECTED] print scalar reverse sort
Senior Software Engineer 'tona ', 'reh', 'ekca', 'lre',
Myxa Corporation '.r', 'h ', 'uj', 'p ', 'ts';
