From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Emanuel Berg Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: How to grok a complicated regex? Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 04:58:04 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <874mpo1b8z.fsf@debian.uxu> References: <87twxo1pnr.fsf@debian.uxu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1426305321 7516 80.91.229.3 (14 Mar 2015 03:55:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 03:55:21 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Mar 14 04:55:21 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1YWdAW-0003C8-5O for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 14 Mar 2015 04:55:20 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:39450 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YWdAV-0005ps-Bb for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 13 Mar 2015 23:55:19 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.kjsl.com!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 53 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: feB02bRejf23rfBm51Mt7Q.user.speranza.aioe.org Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4 (gnu/linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:KMYAKKLph7CNw6a0Zht0VNhr0L4= Mail-Copies-To: never Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:210877 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:103156 Archived-At: Marcin Borkowski writes: > Really? It's not /that/ difficult. You only need > enough coffee (or tea, in my case), time and > motivation. You don’t need a genius, or even IQ > higher than, say, 90 or so. It's not really > /difficult/. Intimidating, yes. Boring, possibly. > Laborious (and mechanical), yes. But not > /difficult/. I mean to be able to read it like you read the code of a programming language. What that takes is training like everything else. Instead of deconstructing and reconstructing complicated expressions like your example I would recommend starting small - the most basic building blocks over and over, then make them gradually more complicated by combinations, then combinations of combinations, ... It is the way a machine would process it (only the other way around), and it is the way a foreign natural language is acquired (almost always). "IQ" is a joke and has nothing to do with it unless IQ is defined by the ability to understand regular expression, which by the way I think isn't far away from how they test "IQ" (which says alot). > I disagree. I don’t think that such a translator > would be a difficult one to write. The compiler itself is perhaps not extremely difficult tho certainly not trivial. But that's only the first step. Then comes presenting it graphically, and make an editor. To get that to actually work, polished, and work better than just mastering and typing that form of code - I'm not convinced. > Wow, what a nice project for a bachelor’s thesis. > Wait a minute. Ohboyohboyohboy. I have to put this > in my faculty’s database of potential topics. Poor > students... ;-) That kind of autistic-genius, single-sided crazy stuff doesn't appeal to me (in fact I think it is destructive). I'm into execution and combinations - i.e. not focusing on the technique per se. As an example, when I did my Master in CS I had Lisp, C++, zsh, and LaTeX (and more), everything working together like glued to each other. I don't like one scientist to do all the thinking, I like on engineer that does everything and thinks at the same time. -- underground experts united