[Python-ideas] PEP 8: raw strings & regular expressions

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 22.10.2015 04:44, Ben Finney wrote:
> Yury Selivanov <yselivanov.ml at gmail.com>
> writes:
> 
>> I was a little bit frustrated that Sublime Text and Atom didn't
>> support all Python 3 features (mainly annotations & async/await
>> syntax), so I decided to write a new highlighter:
> 
> Thanks for scratching your itch and releasing the result as free software!
> 
>> In the process, we had to make a decision on how to highlight raw
>> string literals -- r''. Many existing highlighters assume that all raw
>> strings are regexps, and highlight them as such, i.e. '\s' and '\n'
>> will be highlighted.
> 
> That is evidently a simple mistake. Merely knowing that a token is a raw
> string does not justify the assumption that the string is a regular
> expression, or a filesystem entry name, or a line in a network protocol,
> or anything except plain text.
> 
> Perhaps some more explicit context could be used to signal what the
> intent of a raw string is, but you'd need to find a strong consensus
> that programmers actually intend that. “It's a raw string” doesn't
> justify any of those assumptions.
> 
>> I think that it might be a good idea to state the following in PEP 8:
> 
> No, I don't think the mistaken assumptions you've described should be
> enshrined in a style guide. Instead, the mistaken assumptions should be
> changed.

Agreed. Highlighters should follow language definitions,
not the other way around ;-)

Yuri: Perhaps you could make the behavior optional in your
highlighter and allow people to turn off the highlighting
as regular expression, if they find they don't like the
highlighting.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Oct 22 2015)
>>> Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ...  http://www.egenix.com/
>>> Python Database Interfaces ...           http://products.egenix.com/
>>> Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ...           http://zope.egenix.com/
________________________________________________________________________

::::: Try our mxODBC.Connect Python Database Interface for free ! ::::::

   eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH  Pastor-Loeh-Str.48
    D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg
           Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611
               http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/