Hi,

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:17:01 +0900, James Edward Gray II
<james / grayproductions.net> wrote:
> On Nov 4, 2004, at 8:04 PM, Mark Hubbart wrote:
> 
> > Regular expressions, by all standard definitions, aren't recursive.
> > Perl's regexen have been extended to allow it, but it really isn't
> > considered a standard regex feature.
> 
> Of course, you are correct.  However, recursive "Regular Expressions"
> are becoming fairly common place now.  Ruby's next regex engine will
> support them as well.

Are you saying Oniguruma *will* support it, or *does* support it? It
would be nice if it already does :D

> Regular Expression has evolved considerably from the original
> definition, with recursive capabilities being just another change in a
> long line of added usefulness.  Does that really means they cease to be
> Regular Expressions?  Longhorn will still be Windows, right?
> 
> I think of it more in terms of supersets or, for a programming slant,
> subclassing.  The spirit of Regular Expressions, patterns to
> locate/breakdown text, is intact, I believe.  They're just even more
> handy now.

My statement wasn't supposed to insinuate that adding recursion is
bad, or turns regular expressions into something else; I was just
pointing out that (last time I checked) you can't *expect* to be able
to use recursion in regexen in a particular language. Perl's regexen
are *more* than regexen; you can even embed perl code in them. Also,
I'm pretty sure the recursive matching wasn't in Perl when I last used
it, a couple years back.

> Just my two cents.
> 
> James Edward Gray II
> 
> P.S.  Proving whether or not Perl 6 changes will still be "Regular
> Expression" is left as an exercise for the reader.  ;)

:)

cheers,
Mark