Hello --

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Bill Kelly wrote:

>
> From: "Ciaran McCreesh" <keesh / users-dot-sf.net>
> >
> > Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng wrote:
>
> [...]
> > >    foo(*followed-by:bar)
> >
> > Nice. I'm not sure that a colon is a good idea though -- seems to be used
> > as a quote char fairly often. How about /foo(*followed-by*bar)/r or, if the
> > /x modifier is used, /foo (*followed-by* bar)/rx, which is maybe more
> > readable?
>
> Wow, given the relative ubiquity of (?: ... ) in regexps I'd have thought
> colon an unlikely choice for a quote character.
>
> That  /foo (*followed-by* bar)/rx  is starting to look pretty nice I
> must say.

Funny, I find it almost unreadable.  Same with named captured
substrings, etc.  To me it's sort of like starting a piece of music
with:

  (*the-note-below-middle-C*)

instead of

     0
   -|----
   -|----
   ------
   ------
   ------

(That's bass clef, by the way :-)

I guess over the years I've trained my brain to parse regular
expressions in such a way that having them described in English is
actually a fairly major impediment to my understanding them.

I have no axe to grind about this (as long as it doesn't catch on :-)
Just noting in passing that people have different takes on it.


David

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