Mark Hubbart
11/5/2004 3:59:00 AM
Hi,
On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:17:01 +0900, James Edward Gray II
<james@grayproductions.net> wrote:
> On Nov 4, 2004, at 8:04 PM, Mark Hubbart wrote:
>
> > Regular expressions, by all standard definitions, aren't recursive.
> > Perl's regexen have been extended to allow it, but it really isn't
> > considered a standard regex feature.
>
> Of course, you are correct. However, recursive "Regular Expressions"
> are becoming fairly common place now. Ruby's next regex engine will
> support them as well.
Are you saying Oniguruma *will* support it, or *does* support it? It
would be nice if it already does :D
> Regular Expression has evolved considerably from the original
> definition, with recursive capabilities being just another change in a
> long line of added usefulness. Does that really means they cease to be
> Regular Expressions? Longhorn will still be Windows, right?
>
> I think of it more in terms of supersets or, for a programming slant,
> subclassing. The spirit of Regular Expressions, patterns to
> locate/breakdown text, is intact, I believe. They're just even more
> handy now.
My statement wasn't supposed to insinuate that adding recursion is
bad, or turns regular expressions into something else; I was just
pointing out that (last time I checked) you can't *expect* to be able
to use recursion in regexen in a particular language. Perl's regexen
are *more* than regexen; you can even embed perl code in them. Also,
I'm pretty sure the recursive matching wasn't in Perl when I last used
it, a couple years back.
> Just my two cents.
>
> James Edward Gray II
>
> P.S. Proving whether or not Perl 6 changes will still be "Regular
> Expression" is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)
:)
cheers,
Mark