> On Jan 23, 2017, at 2:27 PM, Joe Groff via swift-evolution > <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > >> >> On Jan 23, 2017, at 2:06 PM, Ben Cohen via swift-evolution >> <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote: >> >> >>> On Jan 23, 2017, at 7:49 AM, Joshua Alvarado <alvaradojosh...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:alvaradojosh...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> Taken from NSHipster <http://nshipster.com/nsregularexpression/>: >>> Happily, on one thing we can all agree. In NSRegularExpression, Cocoa has >>> the most long-winded and byzantine regular expression interface you’re ever >>> likely to come across. >>> >>> There is no way to achieve the goal of being better at string processing >>> than Perl without regular expressions being addressed. It just should not >>> be ignored. >> >> >> We’re certainly not ignoring the importance of regexes. But if there’s a key >> takeaway from your experiences with NSRegularExpression, it’s that a good >> regex implementation matters, a lot. That’s why we don’t want to rush one in >> alongside the rest of the overhaul of String. Instead, we should take our >> time to make it really great, and building on a solid foundation of a good >> String API that’s already in place should help ensure that. > > I do think that there's some danger to focusing too narrowly on regular > expressions as they appear in languages today. I think the industry has > largely moved on to fully-structured formats that require proper parsing > beyond what traditional regexes can handle. The decades of experience with > Perl shows that making regexes too easy to use without an easy ramp up to > more sophisticated string processing leads to people cutting corners trying > to make regex-based designs kind-of work. The Perl 6 folks recognized this > and developed their "regular expression" support into something that > supported arbitrary grammars; I think we'd do well to start at that level by > looking at what they've done. > > -Joe >
I fully agree. I think we could learn something from Perl 6 grammars. As PCREs are to languages without regex, Perl 6 grammars are to languages with PCREs. A lot of really crappy user interfaces and bad tools come down to half-assed parsers; maybe we can do better? (Another argument against rushing it). Russ
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