Hello --

On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Todd Gillespie wrote:

> On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Sean Middleditch wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 2001-11-04 at 14:31, Todd Gillespie wrote:
> > > You don't know the power of the dark side of regexes.
> >
> > Would one rather muck with regex's for 5 hours to get the task done, or
> > spend 20 minutes tops writing a simple parser?
>
> Would one rather spend some quality time learning to use regexes fully, or
> spend an indefinite amount of time debugging your one-off parser?
>
> I'm just guessing here, but I bet you personally don't network your apps
> by writing ethernet headers.

Just to bring it full circle: the original claim was just that regexes
can't do everything, and they can't :-)

> > > I just don't agree that the proper thing to do is to encourage everyone to
> > > write their own parsers for each task.  Most of us are trying to move
> > > *away* from C-style per byte mucking.  Certainly Albert shouldn't ignore
> > > his SAFE flags, but that's hardly grounds to abandon generalized parsing
> > > engines.
> >
> > If there were an effective generalized parsing engine, it wouldn't be
> > necessary.
>
> Look around.

Not to encourage coddling, but can you add a hint?


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack / candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav / shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav