Christof: This may be true of traditional regular expressions, which is something you'll encounter in a college level automata class but very rarely in the real world. The fact is that most modern, since the 80s at least, regex implementations (JavaScript, Java, PHP,...) can handle many "nonregular" grammars, by making use of features such as look-ahead, atomic grouping, backreferences, etc. For specifics on this, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression#Patterns_for_irregular_languages - jake On 3/29/07, Karl Swedberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Mar 29, 2007, at 4:55 AM, Christof Donat wrote: > > > Regular Expressions are used to define regular (Type 3 in Chomsky Hirarchy) > > grammars. You can not express nested parentheses in regular grammar, you > need > > a context free (Type 2) but not regular grammar. > Christof, that is fascinating! Thanks for that information! > > > This is something I'll have to remember for the next dinner conversation > with friends. You never know where Noam Chomsky[1] might pop up in a > conversation. :) > > > --Karl > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky > _________________ > Karl Swedberg > www.englishrules.com > www.learningjquery.com > > > _______________________________________________ > jQuery mailing list > discuss@jquery.com > http://jquery.com/discuss/ > > _______________________________________________ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
