Jarkko Hietaniemi writes:
: > : Though whether being able to
: > : yank out the RE engine and treat it as a standalone library is important
: > : enough to warrant being treated as a design goal or not is a separate
: > : issue. (I think so, as it also means I can treat it as a black box for the
: > : moment so there's less to try and stuff in my head at once)
: >
: > As a fellow bear of very little brain, I'm just trying to point out that
: > we already have a good example of the dangers to that approach.
:
: Still, having the regexen as "reusable component" (i.e. library)
: wouldn't be a bad idea. The current regex code most definitely isn't
: detachable or reusable, so we can't have said to have explored that
: option.
Well, other languages have explored that option, and I think that makes
for an unnatural interface. If you think of regexes as part of a
larger language, you really want them to be as incestuous as possible,
just as any other part of the language is incestuous with the rest of
the language. That's part of what I mean when I say that I'm trying to
look at regular expressions as just a strange variant of Perl code.
Looking at it from a slightly different angle, regular expressions are
in great part control syntax, and library interfaces are lousy at
implementing control.
Larry
