regular expressions questions

[Tim Peters]

[Andrew M. Kuchling]
> ...
> I'm doubtful regular expressions are better for CP4E's audience than
> a fairly simple parser generator such as, say, John Aycock's SPARK.
> Consider how many people are confused by the fact that <p>.*</p> does
> a greedy match and matches all of '<p>para1</p><p>para2</p>'.  And
> didn't SNOBOL provide string processing features that were powerful
> but still usable by non-programmers?  (But my memory's fuzzy.)

SNOBOL and Icon both have pattern-matching systems much more powerful than
regexps, and easier to use, and their audiences are much more from the
humanities than from either comp sci or cgi sci <wink>.  You still have to
be a programmer, though -- specifying a rigorous pattern *is* programming!

it's-cp4e-not-cp4idiots<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim