From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
To: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Cc: Vr Rm <vrrm00@gmail.com>,
Emacs development discussions <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Raw strings (experimental patches inside)
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2012 16:27:19 +0900 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87boihsxbc.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <jwvzk62d1qj.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org>
Stefan Monnier writes:
> > You still need to *double*-backslash-escape, backslash-escaping is
> > insufficient.
>
> If the special chars don't need to be backslash escaped, then you don't
> need to double escape either, obviously.
Of course they need to be backslash-escaped, fairly frequently. I
often search for things like '(foo' and '?\' in Lisp, '{' and '}' in
Python or C, '*' in ReST, etc, because I want to find something in a
particular syntactic context. There's a reason why basic REs
backslashed some of the basic operators, it wasn't just an epidemic of
early-onset Alzheimer's at Bell Labs. They were wrong to put weight
on that reason, of course, but they realized their mistake a lot
faster than we Emacs developers did. :-(
It's true that a saner regexp syntax would reduce the need, but only
rawstrings can help with stuff like the regexp needed to find an
end-of-row in LaTeX arrays: "\\\\\\\\". Those of us with a bit of
astigmatism can't even be sure that's 8 backslashes without careful
counting.
> I don't have rawstring phobia. I just think it's a workaround which
> makes Elisp's syntax more complex without fixing the real problem.
Off-by-one error! The point is that there are *two* problems here.
I don't know if it's a good idea, but you could even fix both with one
syntax. Ie, when you read a rawstring, the resulting string is
automatically given a "if-you-use-me-as-a-regex-use-pcre-syntax-please"
property.
> Could it make the syntax slightly better? Yes. Would the difference
> be significant? I doubt it.
Works-for-me is not a good way to design an Emacs for other people.
BTW, I was -0.5 on rawstrings when they were introduced in XEmacs. I
was wrong then, and I had better reasons (ie, Emacs compatibility) for
being negative.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-08-11 7:27 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 35+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-08-03 2:02 Raw strings (experimental patches inside) Aurélien Aptel
2012-08-03 9:45 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2012-08-03 17:45 ` Aurélien Aptel
2012-08-04 19:41 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2012-08-05 0:16 ` Aurélien Aptel
2012-08-05 11:36 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2012-08-05 7:13 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2012-08-06 1:55 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-06 10:55 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2012-08-06 16:16 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-06 16:40 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2012-08-03 22:43 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-04 14:38 ` Ivan Andrus
2012-08-04 23:47 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-05 0:13 ` Aurélien Aptel
2012-08-06 16:17 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-10 1:33 ` Vr Rm
2012-08-10 5:08 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2012-08-10 15:13 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-10 17:28 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2012-08-10 18:50 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-08-11 7:27 ` Stephen J. Turnbull [this message]
2012-08-11 11:05 ` Dmitri Paduchikh
2012-08-12 0:29 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2012-08-10 21:11 ` Vr Rm
2012-08-10 23:03 ` Davis Herring
2012-08-10 23:24 ` Learning Emacs regexp (was: Re: Raw strings (experimental patches inside)) chad
2012-08-11 7:39 ` Raw strings (experimental patches inside) Stephen J. Turnbull
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2012-08-10 22:33 Dmitry Gutov
2012-08-11 7:49 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2012-08-11 17:05 ` Dmitry Gutov
2012-08-11 17:57 ` Andreas Schwab
2012-08-11 18:22 ` Dmitry Gutov
2012-08-12 0:23 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2012-08-11 13:30 ` Stefan Monnier
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