On Jun 8, 7:38 pm, "ru...@yahoo.com" <ru...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On 06/07/2011 06:30 PM, Roy Smith wrote: > > > > > On 06/06/2011 08:33 AM, rusi wrote: > >>> Evidently for syntactic, implementation and cultural reasons, Perl > >>> programmers are likely to get (and then overuse) regexes faster than > >>> python programmers. > > > "ru...@yahoo.com" <ru...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> I don't see how the different Perl and Python cultures themselves > >> would make learning regexes harder for Python programmers. > > > Oh, that part's obvious. People don't learn things in a vacuum. They > > read about something, try it, fail, and ask for help. If, in one > > community, the response they get is, "I see what's wrong with your > > regex, you need to ...", and in another they get, "You shouldn't be > > using a regex there, you should use this string method instead...", it > > should not be a surprise that it's easier to learn about regexes in the > > first community. > > I think we are just using different definitions of "harder". > > I said, immediately after the sentence you quoted, > > >> At > >> most I can see the Perl culture encouraging their use and > >> the Python culture discouraging it, but that doesn't change > >> the ease or difficulty of learning. > > Constantly being told not to use regexes certainly discourages > one from learning them, but I don't think that's the same as > being *harder* to learn in Python. The syntax of regexes is, > at least at the basic level, pretty universal, and it is in > learning to understand that syntax that most of any difficulty > lies. Whether to express a regex as "/code (blue)|(red)/i" in > Perl or "(r'code (blue)|(red)', re.I)" in Python is a superficial > difference, as is, say, using match results: "$alert = $1' vs > "alert = m.group(1)". > > A Google for "python regular expression tutorial" produces > lots of results including the Python docs HOWTO. And because > the syntax is pretty universal, leaving the "python" off that > search string will yield many, many more that are applicable. > Although one does get some "don't do that" responses to regex > questions on this list (and some are good advice), there are > also usually answers too. > > So I think of it as more of a Python culture thing, rather > then being actually harder to learn to use regexes in Python > although I see how one can view it your way too.
... this is the old nature vs nurture debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list