From: Yuri Khan <yurivkhan@gmail.com>
To: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
Cc: van@scratch.space, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,
Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>,
rms@gnu.org, Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Off Topic (was: bug#31544)
Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 23:53:52 +0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAP_d_8Wx7r=Mob=vSzn6EnNmoWah2UXqBjSoMEdtmSy4dKXXkg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20180524163534.GA4035@ACM>
On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 11:38 PM Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> 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.
> That said, rx.el is used ~72 times in 19 files.el in Emacs, so somebody
> likes it.
I like rx.el.
I like it because any reasonably involved rx.el expression will be written
out on multiple lines, indented, and possibly commented; whereas the
equivalent plain regexp will be jumbled up on one long line, or else broken
up into a concat of several arbitrary parts.
I like rx.el because its expressions can be navigated structurally, using
‘backward-up-list’, ‘forward-sexp’, and the like. The same commands work on
regular regular expressions only if they have not been broken up for
readability.
I also like rx.el because it allows me to see fewer backslashes,
double-backslashes, and quadruple-backslashes.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-05-24 16:53 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 [this message]
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
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