--- Edward Peschko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What I think you're looking for is the fact that they're not > regexes any more. They are > "rexen", but in > horrifying-secret-reality, what has happened is that Larry's decided > > to move Fortran out of core, and replace it with yacc. > > just an aside, and a bit off-topic, but has anybody considered > hijacking the regular > expression engine in perl6 and turning it into its opposite, namely > making *productions* > of strings/sounds/whatever that could possibly match the regular > expression? ie: > > a* > > producing > > '' > a > aa > aaa > aaaa > > etc. >
This has been alluded to before. What would /A*B*/ produce? Because if you were just processing the rex, I think you'd have to finish generating all possibilities of A* before you began iterating over B*... =Austin > I could think of lots of uses for this: > > 1) test data for databases and programs. > 2) input for genetic algorithms/code generators > 3) semantic rules/production of random sentences. > > In fact, I foresee a combo of 2,3 and some expert system somewhere > producing the first > sentient perl program. ;-) > > Ed > > ( > ps: As for the 'rexen' concept of matching stuff other than > characters, hell, that's a > *wonderful* idea. And if you turned the regex around so that you > could (in a meaningful > way) make productions from it for stuff other than characters, you > could make random > http requests, music, GUI requests/interactions database connections > and so forth. > > Its a code testers' dream... > > Now, just got to think of the syntax for it.. how to make it usable. > )
