On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote: > Jarrett Billingsley wrote: >> >> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Bill Baxter <wbax...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Ok. I'm certainly not in love with the API either. Though, the only >>> RegEx API I've ever used that felt totally comfortable with was >>> Perl's, which in large part is syntax instead of an API. Python's >>> syntax I have to look over the documentation every time I use it, too. >>> Maybe it's because of the "matching" vs "searching" distinction that >>> I find impossible to remember. >>> (http://docs.python.org/library/re.html) >>> >> >> Is there ever a situation where you want to use a single regexp for >> both matching _and_ searching? And if not, couldn't you just use ^ to >> anchor it? I never understood why Python's API makes such a >> distinction. > > Ehm, that's odd. You'd think that after Perl has set the precedent, it would > be hard to do major goofs in designing a regex API. > > By the way, the more I dig into std.regexp, the stiffer the hair on my neck > gets. Get this: the API offers both global functions and member functions, > with both RegExp and plain string arguments. The latter are carefully > designed to maximize the number of clashes, potential confusions, and errors > when using both std.string and std.regex.
All I know is that I found one incantation that works and I've been copy-pasting that every since. :-) > But wait, there's more. The API defines the following functions that all > ostensibly do some sort of mattern patching (sic): find, search, test, > match, and exec. I wish I were kidding. There's some opIndex and opEquals > thrown in for good measure. Knuth wouldn't know what each of them does after > studying them for a week and then watching an episode from "The Bachelor". > And get this: global search() does not do what member search() does. Nope. > Global search() does what member test() does. I have only contempt for such > designs. Maybe "design" is too strong a word. Most Phobos modules seem to have been put together rather hastily in order to fill a pressing need. Often *something* is better than nothing at all, even if the something is not so great. --bb
