[BangPypers] Do you think a more declarative RE syntax would make the world a better place ?

[Vishal]

Thanks everybody for the insight that you have shared with me and the group.

As of now, I am abandoning this weekend project, and have started looking
for something else :))

BTW, in the process of designing the semantics of the YAML description, I
had to read through the Python RE module docs a few times and that has
clarified my understanding of the regular expressions in general. So now I
can atleast look at a regex and successfully try to figure out what its
trying to say.

Thanks and best regards,
Vishal

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Dhananjay Nene <dhananjay.nene at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 5:04 PM, Vishal <vsapre80 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello fellas,
> >
> > I am trying to create a python function that can take an plain english
> > description of a regular expression and return the regular expression to
> > the
> > caller.
> >
> > Currently I am thinking of the description in YAML format. So, we can
> store
> > the description as a raw string variable, which is passed on to this
> > another
> > function and output of that function is then passed to the 're' module.
> > Following is a rather simplistic example:
> >
> > # a(b|c)d+e*
> >
> > re1 = """
> >
> > - literal: 'a'
> > - one_of: 'b,c'
> > - one_or_more_of: 'd'
> > - zero_or_more_of: 'e'
> > """
> >
> > myre = re.compile(getRegex(re1))
> >
> > myre.search(...)
> >
> > etc.
> >
> > Does anyone think something of this sort would be of wider use? Do you
> know
> > already existing packages that can do it? What are the limitations that
> you
> > see to this approach? Does anyone think, having the declarative string in
> > code, would make it more maintainable?
> >
>
> The real struggle here is the complexity of modeling the problem you are
> attempting to solve. RE syntax per se isn't the problem though it could be
> recast a bit in favour of readability and grokkability away from brevity
> (not that I am in favour of that). The issue is really the complexity of
> the
> diversity of situations that RE expressions attempt to model. Should you
> wan't to attempt to support the entire range of scenarios that REs can
> manage, I imagine the yaml will become excessively verbose to manage and
> will eventually start suffering similar difficulties of grokkability that
> complex REs end up with. While I don't think there's a good solution for
> that, I think a victory if at all feasible could be better had through a
> better modeling of how pattern matching expressions can be composed
> (differently from current RE structures) rather than making the current
> expression structures verbose and declarative.
>
> Dhananjay
>
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>
>
>
> --
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-- 
Thanks and best regards,
Vishal Sapre

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