On Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:48:21 +1100, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:
>On Wednesday 04 November 2015 11:33, ru...@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. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
