String Pattern Matching: regex and Python regex documentation

[Xah Lee]

Xah Lee wrote:
« the Python regex documentation is available at:
 http://xahlee.org/perl-python/python_re-write/lib/module-re.html ...»

Jürgen Exner wrote:
«Yeah, sure, and the Perl regex documentation is available at 'perldoc
perlre'.  So what? Is that anything new or surprising?»

It is of interest and new, because it is a rewrite of Python's
documentation. And it is of interest to Perlers, because Perl and
Python uses the same regex syntax.

The purpose of this rewrite, is to fix Python's lousy documentation,
and to demonstrate a style of technical writing, where precision and
clarity is the prime directive.

It demonstrates a style of documentation, where the philosophy is
task-oriented and uses examples sans misgivings.  (in this aspect, it
is similar to the style of Perl's official documentation.)

Further, the exposition style focuses on the manifestation of the
language elements, as a piece of mathematics, a style often found in
functional language's documentations. It is opposed to, treating the
language as a state machine or compiler engine, which are often
necessarily the approach of imperative languages's documentations.

This project was undertaken as a response to a challenge put forth to
me with a $100 reward, on 2005-04-12 on comp.lang.python newsgroup. I
never received the due reward.

Thanks.

  Xah
  xah at xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/