Language documentation ( was Re: Computing Industry shams)

[alex goldman]

Sean Burke wrote:

> 
> alex goldman <hello at spamm.er> writes:
> 
>> vermicule wrote:
>> 
>> > 
>> > What is so hard to understand ?
>> > Should be perfectly clear even to a first year undergraduate.
>> > 
>> > As for "greedy" even a minimal exposure to Djikstra's shortest path
>> > algorithm would have made the concept intuitive. And from memory,
>> > that is the sort of thing done in Computing 101 and in  Data Structures
>> > and Algorithms 101
>> > 
>> > It seems to me that you want the Python doc to be written for morons.
>> > And that is not a valid complaint.
>> 
>> He's right actually. If we understand the term "greedy" as it's used in
>> graph search and optimization algorithms, Python's RE matching actually
>> IS greedy.
> 
> No, you're just confused about the optimization metric.
> In regexes, "greedy" match optimizes for the longest match,
> not the fastest.
> 
> And this is common regex terminology - man perlre and you will
> find discussion of "greedy" vs. "stingy" matching.

Read what you quoted again. Everyone (Xah, vermicule, myself) was talking
about "greedy" as it's used in graph search and optimization algorithms.