Python and Regular Expressions

[Ethan Furman]

Stefan Behnel wrote:
> Patrick Maupin, 10.04.2010 19:11:
> 
>> On Apr 10, 11:35 am, Neil Cerutti<ne... at norwich.edu>  wrote:
>>
>>> On 2010-04-10, Patrick Maupin<pmau... at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> as Pyparsing".  Which is all well and good, except then the OP
>>>> will download pyparsing, take a look, realize that it uses
>>>> regexps under the hood, and possibly be very confused.
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't agree with that. If a person is trying to ski using
>>> pieces of wood that they carved themselves, I don't expect them
>>> to be surprised that the skis they buy are made out of similar
>>> materials.
>>
>>
>> But, in this case, the guy ASKED how to make the skis in his
>> woodworking shop, and was told not to be silly -- you don't use wood
>> to make skis -- and then directed to go buy some skis that are, in
>> fact, made out of wood.
> 
> 
> Running a Python program in CPython eventually boils down to a sequence 
> of commands being executed by the CPU. That doesn't mean you should 
> write those commands manually, even if you can. It's perfectly ok to 
> write the program in Python instead.
> 
> Stefan

And it's even more perfectly okay to use Python when it's the best tool 
for the job, and re when *it's* the best tool for the job.

~Ethan~