From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Oct 02 2007 - 14:25:25 CST
On 10/2/2007 12:24 PM, Michael Maxwell wrote:
> 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.
>
Yes, I quite agree - however, what I'm saying is that simply viewing
regexes to be acting on character codes is in conflict with the desire
to force them to honor canonical equivalence. And once you desire that,
it makes the meaning of [a-k] either ambiguous or tediously limiting -
in a way that makes the construct less usable.
>
>>> 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.
>>
In fact, a strict 'binary' construction of regex could be viewed as
counter-intuitive to some users. What is counter-intuitive depends on
your expectations - and expectations can be language dependent.
A./
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Oct 02 2007 - 14:28:15 CST