Would you like a Snobol pattern matcher? (Re: Making regex suck less)

[Carl Banks]

John Roth wrote:
> I don't know much about Snobol, unfortunately.
> I think my biggest issue here is that we shouldn't
> reinvent the wheel unless there is a good reason.
> In other words, Larry is taking Perl in a specific
> direction. Assuming we want to make major
> changes to regex,

I don't think anyone wants to make changes to regular expressions, per
se.  I think this discussion is about adding a higher level syntax to
regular expressions, that makes them more readable and versatile, for
cases where that's important.


> is there any _good_ reason
> for doing something conceptually different and
> consequently adding to the cacophony?

I think there is a good reason to have a higher level syntax.  It
serves a purpose heretofore unserved: that complex regular expressions
no longer have to be unbearably unreadable.

I could live without it, though.


-- 
CARL BANKS
http://www.aerojockey.com