On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Ken Fox wrote:
> Dave Storrs wrote:
> > why didn't you have to write:
> >
> > rule ugly_c_comment {
> >
> /
> >
> \/ \* [ .*? <ugly_c_comment>? ]*? \* \/
> >
> { let $0 := " " }
> >
> /
> > }
>
> Think of the curly braces as the regex quotes. If "{" is the quote
> then there's nothing special about "/" and it doesn't need to be
> escaped.
Ok, good. Then it *does* work the way I thought. Thanks.
>Also, I don't think you want spaces between "/" and "*"
> because "/ *" isn't a comment delimiter.
True, but as I understand it, literal whitespace in a regex is no
longer significant...so writing "/ *" in a regex is equivalent to writing
"/*" or "/ *" etc. In order to match an actual "/ *", you would need
to write "/\s+*".
Actually, this is one thing that has troubled me about the new
regex rules, and I've mentioned it before. I would still like for there
to be a "reverse /x" switch, that would tell the regex that I want it to
treat whitespace literally...if for no other reason than because it would
reduces line noise in regexen. In most situations you probably wouldn't
want it, but I can think of occasions when you would.
Dave Storrs
