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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
Cc: van@scratch.space, emacs-devel@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org, npostavs@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Off Topic (was: bug#31544)
Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 20:01:38 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <83603dasy5.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20180524163534.GA4035@ACM> (message from Alan Mackenzie on Thu,  24 May 2018 16:35:34 +0000)

> Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 16:35:34 +0000
> Cc: Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com>, van@scratch.space, eliz@gnu.org,
>   emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> rx.el uses a wordy syntax, somewhat analagously to Cobol 50 years ago.
> Its premiss is that it's the terse, dense, austere characters which make
> a regexp difficult to write and read.  I would suggest that it's more
> the abstract concepts which cause beginners difficulties, rather than
> the syntax.  This was true of Cobol 50 years ago, and I think it's
> always been the case with regexps.

I actually agree with the premise: reading an rx spec of a regexp is
much easier than reading the regexp itself.

> That said, rx.el is used ~72 times in 19 files.el in Emacs, so somebody
> likes it.

I certainly do (but I'm not responsible for those uses).



      parent reply	other threads:[~2018-05-24 17:01 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <7D0B397D-5D1B-4B8C-93B6-1CA207DD552A@scratch.space>
     [not found] ` <E1fKwoI-0000Ug-Lv@fencepost.gnu.org>
     [not found]   ` <A424F9A2-E4C4-47CD-A4B4-E9CEB32A60FD@scratch.space>
     [not found]     ` <A2BA1EF2-D393-43D5-8F44-E802DC705C0A@gnu.org>
2018-05-22  6:58       ` Off Topic (was: bug#31544) Van L
2018-05-23  3:24         ` Richard Stallman
2018-05-23  3:44           ` Van L
2018-05-23 11:06           ` Noam Postavsky
2018-05-24  2:48             ` Richard Stallman
2018-05-24  9:03               ` Off Topic Robert Pluim
2018-05-24 15:20                 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-05-24 15:41                   ` Robert Pluim
2018-05-24 17:07                     ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-05-25  2:59                     ` Richard Stallman
2018-05-24 16:35               ` Off Topic (was: bug#31544) Alan Mackenzie
2018-05-24 16:53                 ` Yuri Khan
2018-05-24 19:57                   ` Alan Mackenzie
2018-05-24 20:24                     ` Noam Postavsky
2018-05-24 20:36                     ` Off Topic Stefan Monnier
2018-05-25  3:01                     ` Off Topic (was: bug#31544) Richard Stallman
2018-05-25  2:59                   ` Richard Stallman
2018-05-24 17:01                 ` Eli Zaretskii [this message]

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