RE: New Public Review Issue: Proposed Update UTS #18

From: Michael Maxwell (mmaxwell@casl.umd.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 02 2007 - 13:24:55 CST

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    Asmus Freytag wrote:
    >> Depending on how many accented letters a language uses,
    >> writing the equivalent expression manually can be both
    >> tedious and error-prone.

    I replied:
    >> Aren't there two issues here that need to be separated:
    >>
    >> (1) the issue of what some regex *means*, e.g. what ^X
    >> means, where X is some regex.
    >>
    >> (2) the question of how easy it is to enter X on a computer.
     
    Asmus Freytag replied:
    > In ASCII/English these are tied up inextricably, so that you
    > can't always get good guidance on what is the correct
    > (expected) way to extend these to other sets/scripts/languages.

    I realize it may be difficult to extend ASCII conventions to other scripts etc., but I think that should be viewed as a problem of type (1) above, and quite distinct from problems of type (2), which are the "tedious and error-prone" problems.

    >> I would hate to make the meaning of some regex
    >> counter-intuitive just because it's hard to type with today's
    >> software.
    >
    > I don't think I was advocating that.

    No, of course not. But worrying too much about the "tedious and error-prone" kinds of problems means that we might accidently end up with the counter-intuitive type problem.

       Mike Maxwell
       CASL/ U Md



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