From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Off Topic (was: bug#31544) Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 16:35:34 +0000 Message-ID: <20180524163534.GA4035@ACM> References: <7D0B397D-5D1B-4B8C-93B6-1CA207DD552A@scratch.space> <6271469D-6B02-4334-828E-D81816143734@scratch.space> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1527179750 30069 195.159.176.226 (24 May 2018 16:35:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 16:35:50 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.9.4 (2018-02-28) Cc: van@scratch.space, eliz@gnu.org, Noam Postavsky , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Richard Stallman Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu May 24 18:35:45 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fLtDM-0007hC-13 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 24 May 2018 18:35:44 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:39751 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fLtFR-0006FW-EH for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 24 May 2018 12:37:53 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:38609) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fLtFG-0006Cm-3v for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 May 2018 12:37:43 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fLtFC-0000kU-Pt for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 May 2018 12:37:42 -0400 Original-Received: from colin.muc.de ([193.149.48.1]:48932 helo=mail.muc.de) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fLtFC-0000k6-If for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 24 May 2018 12:37:38 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 74633 invoked by uid 3782); 24 May 2018 16:37:37 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p5B147627.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [91.20.118.39]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Thu, 24 May 2018 18:37:35 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 4071 invoked by uid 1000); 24 May 2018 16:35:34 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 193.149.48.1 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:225660 Archived-At: Hello, Richard. On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 22:48:59 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > We have such things but we haven't adopted any of them in Emacs itself. > > Doesn't rx.el qualify? > It's an example of what I said. We have it, but we don't actually use it > much if at all. This suggests to me that it has drawbacks which prevent > it from being clearly superior. 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. > If someone comes up with a replacement syntax that reduces the drawbacks, > we might start using it all the time. I don't think this will happen. At least, I hope not. ;-) > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) > Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).