f*cking re module

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 07 Jul 2005 06:47:54 -0400, Chris Smith wrote:

>>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Hoffman <cam.ac.uk at mh391.invalid> writes:
> 
>     Michael> Greg Lindstrom wrote:
>     >> I hear that Perl 6 is going to have a rewrite of regular
>     >> expressions; it will be interesting to see what their hard work
>     >> produces.
> 
>     Michael>  From what I saw a while ago, it didn't look like it
>     Michael> would be any simpler or more elegant. But that was a
>     Michael> while ago.  -- Michael Hoffman
> 
> Oh, come on:  what's a Perliodic Table of Operators, between friends?
> http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/blog/code/PeriodicTable.html


That, and the discussion on operators by Larry Wall, are two of the most
scary things I've ever seen. Is there any possible sequence of bytes that
will not be a valid Perl expression or operator?

I was going to suggest a single null byte, but then I realised that it
is probably be an operator for converting a decimal numeric string to an
associative array mapping integers to German verbs.

All jokes aside, thank goodness Guido isn't Larry. Larry actually gives
the thumbs-up to syntax that will confuse programmers:

[quote]
So Perl could keep track of a unary = operator, even if the human
programmer might be confused. So I'd place a unary = operator in the
category of "OK, but don't use it for anything that will cause widespread
confusion."
[end quote]

There is no unary = operator in Perl, yet, but Larry sees nothing wrong
with the concept of syntax that confuses programmers, or of code which can
be parsed as legal code by Perl even if it can't be displayed on the
developer's computer.



-- 
Steven.