On 7/1/10 5:11 AM, Roy Smith wrote:
Stephen Hansen<me+list/pyt...@ixokai.io> wrote:
The quote does not deny the power of regular expressions; it challenges
widely held assumption and belief that comes from *somewhere* that they
are the best way to approach any problem that is text related.
Well, that assumption comes from historical unix usage where traditional
tools like awk, sed, ed, and grep, made heavy use of regex, and
therefore people learned to become proficient at them and use them all
the time.
Oh, I'm fully aware of the history of re's -- but its not those old hats
and even their students and the unix geeks I'm talking about.
It's the newbies and people wandering into the language with absolutely
no idea about the history of unix, shell scripting and such, who so
often arrive with the idea firmly planted in their head, that I wonder
at. Sure, there's going to be a certain amount of cross-polination from
unix-geeks to students-of-students-of-students-of unix geeks to spread
the idea, but it seems more pervasive for that. I just picture a
re-vangelist camping out in high schools and colleges selling the party
line or something :)
--
... Stephen Hansen
... Also: Ixokai
... Mail: me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io
... Blog: http://meh.ixokai.io/
P.S. And no, unix geeks is not a pejorative term.
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