Regular expressions

[Seymore4Head]

On Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:48:21 +1100, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

>On Wednesday 04 November 2015 11:33, rurpy at yahoo.com wrote:
>
>>> Not quite.  Core language concepts like ifs, loops, functions,
>>> variables, slicing, etc are the socket wrenches of the programmer's
>>> toolbox.  Regexs are like an electric impact socket wrench.  You can do
>>> the same work without it, but in many cases it's slower. But you have to
>>> learn the other hand tools first in order to really use the electric
>>> driver properly (understanding torques, direction of threads, etc), lest
>>> you wonder why you're breaking off so many bolts with the torque of the
>>> impact drive.
>> 
>> I consider regexs more fundemental
>
>I'm sure that there are people who consider the International Space Station 
>more fundamental than the lever, the wedge and the hammer, but they would be 
>wrong too.
>
>Given primitives for branching, loops and variables, you can build support 
>for regexes. Given regexes, how would you build support for variables?
>
>Of course, you could easily prove me wrong. All you would need to do to 
>demonstrate that regexes are more fundamental than branching, loops and 
>variables would be to demonstrate that the primitive operations available in 
>commonly used CPUs are regular expressions, and that (for example) C's for 
>loop and if...else are implemented in machine code as regular expressions, 
>rather than the other way around.

So far the only use I have for regex is to replace slicing, but I
think it is an improvement.