Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<[email protected]> wrote:
RE attributes:
"repeat", "r": Repeat over the whole input string
"ignorecase", "i": case insensitive
"multiline", "m": treat as multiple lines separated by newlines
"verbose", "v": ignores space outside [] and allows comments
And how do you combine them? "repeat, ignorecase"? Writing and parsing such
options becomes a little adventure in itself. I think the "g", "i", and "m"
flags are popular enough if you've done any amount of regex programming. If
not, you'll look up the manual regardless.
While we're on the subject I'd like to mention that an unbelievably
overwhelming proportion of the time, when I use regexen, I want them
to be global. As in, I don't think I've ever used a non-global regex.
To that effect I'd like to propose that either "g" be the default
attribute, or that it should be on _unless_ some other attribute ("o"
for once?) is present. I think this is one thing that Perl got
terribly wrong.
Well I agree for searches but not for substitutions.
In D searches, the lazy way of matching means you can always go with "g"
and change your mind whenever you please. I think I'll simply eliminate
"g" from the offered options for search.
Andrei
