At 15:19 +0100 2000-08-01, Tim Bunce wrote:
> > RegEx (internals?)
>
>Yes, Yes, Yes.
I could argue for regex being language too: it's a little language,
and it's got very crufty of late. Yes, it's sexy cruft which can be
justified because it allows one to do neat things which were
previously difficult or impossible (or merely verbose). But it's
also more or less poorly documented, more or less poorly understood,
more or less well-used, and more or less poorly tested. (Indeed,
some of it's still marked as experimental.) If the language group is
going to give each of perl's reserved words (and much else besides)
the third degree so as to decide whether it should stay in the core,
be cast into outer darkness, or end up somewhere in between, then I'd
say that the same should be done for the language supported by the
regex engine. Once the language group has decided what are the
required and optional features of the regex language, then the
internals folks can start working out how to make it fly (or tell the
language folks it won't).
Pluggable regex engines would make supporting (say) core and optional
regex language features easier.
Want me to write this up as an RFC?
--
Dominic Dunlop
