Re: Regexps and strings once again

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> On 09/14/2014 04:27 PM, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>>> (dom-by-id dom (regexp "I \\(couldn't\\)?haz new syntax"))
>
> `regexp' could just as well take a new syntax.

Sure, it could take Perl regexps, but having the argument not be a
string would be a stretch, wouldn't it?

If we want to do a more string-ey syntax, but not require wrapping it in
(regexp ...), then we could have something like:

#r"This is (not )?a Perl regexp"

for regexp literals.  Quoting " characters would still be necessary, but
I don't think that's all that important.  (And quoting quote chars is
less annoying than quoting slashes.)

If you're constructing the regexp from strings, you'd need the `regexp'
call to turn it into a regexp object.

I kinda envision all the functions that currently have a regexp option,
or a regexp version, to also take a regexp object, no matter how it's
defined.  Like `search-forward'/`re-search-forward'...

And this could be done gradually once we've introduced the regexp object
type, so it doesn't seem like an insurmountable change, if somebody
wanted to work on this...

-- 
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   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no