[Python-Dev] sre improvements

[Greg Ward]

On 13 June 2001, Fredrik Lundh said:
> conditionals:
> 
>     (?(cond)true)
>     (?(cond)true|false)
> 
> where cond is a group number (true if defined) or an assertion
> pattern, and true/false are patterns.
> 
> (imo, whoever invented that needs help ;-)

I think I'd have to agree with /F on this one... somewhere around Perl
5.003 or 5.004, regexes in Perl went from being a powerful and really
cool facility to being a massively overgrown language-within-a-language.
I *tried* to use some of the fancy new features a few times out of
curiosity, but could never get them to work.  (At the time, I think I
was a pretty sharp Perl programmer, although I've dulled since then.)

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - Unix bigot                                  gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
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