Chris Osgood wrote:
> 
>....
> 
> One thing I don't see too many people talk about is the way regular
> expressions are handled.  Perl has a simple to use regex syntax (although
> not so easy to read all the time) and is the #1 reason why I use Perl.  It's
> the text processor to end all text processors and so many things that I deal
> with these days (HTML, XML, FTP, SMTP, etc) are text based .  

I deal with XML constantly but hardly ever with regular expressions.
After all the XML parser has done the work of ripping the data apart for
you. Overall this leads to an interesting question, though, why are you
using regular expressions for these things? Why not use an HTML parser
module,  XML parser module, FTP module, SMTP module and so forth. I'm
sure you have a good reason but I just want to understand it.

Do you think that it is possible that we are moving into a
post-text-munging age. XML and the new XML-based protocols are supposed
to let you work on the structured data, not the raw text.

> ... Ruby's regular
> expressions are similar to Perl.  None of that "compile this", "run that"
> expression stuff you get with C/C++, Java, and last time I looked, Python.
> It's built into Ruby and Perl, I really like that for ease of use. 

Perl and Ruby do have much more integrated regular expression support.
I'm not convinced that Python's is really much harder to use but I
accept that the language doesn't feel as optimized for regular
expressions and text munging as Perl and Ruby.

How does Ruby's depth of RE features compare to Perl's? Is it just the
case that Ruby has them language-integrated or does it really have all
of the little tricks and quirks of Perl?

> ...
> 
> This has been said before and I'll say it again:
> Ruby has the power and ease of use of Perl combined with a nice OO
> environment similar to Python, it's the best of both worlds.

I tend to think that Python is easier to use and more powerful than Perl
-- if you leave aside regular expressions. So I would say: "Ruby has the
regular expressions of Perl and the other features of Python plus a
little more OO from Smalltalk."

In terms of competitiveness, Ruby's Perl and Smalltalk heritage is a
great advantage. I get the impression that the Ruby community has picked
up some Smalltalk adherents and certainly many, many Perl adherents. If
anything helps Ruby to surpass Python it will be that. If Perl 6 does
not live up to people's expectations or takes too long, Ruby may pick up
more of the bored Perl hackers than Python does just because of
familiarity.

> > Is there any sort of effort to port Ruby to the Palm's?
> 
> I would like to see this as well.

By the way, it is possible that the fact that Python separates out
regular expressions makes it easier to port to small platforms. You can
just rip out the "re" module and all of the modules that depend upon it.
Of course you lose a lot of stuff like url-handling and all major
protocols but maybe that is an acceptable price on a small platform. I
don't know for sure whether Pippy has the RE library or not.

In general, "smaller" languages get ported first. i.e. Scheme and Forth
were the first on Palm. Python came much later. Ruby is probably on the
same order as Python so it is likely more the effort required that has
stopped it from happening so far.
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