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Next Generation Regexp

Posted by michael on from the will-the-insanity-never-end dept.

prostoalex writes "Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, author of newly published 2nd edition of Mastering Regular Expressions, wrote a feature article for O'Reilly Network on the recent innovations in the regular expression world. You'd think that such area as regular expressions would be fairly stable, but according to the author, 'when I started to work on the second edition of Mastering Regular Expressions and started refocusing on the field, I was rather shocked to find out how much had really changed'. The article's behind-the-scene purpose is apparently to push a new book that O'Reilly published this month, but it has great educational value for anyone involved with practical extracting and reporting."

4 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Re:When is RegExp2 Going To Be Shipped by duck_prime · · Score: 4, Funny
    Amazon has slipped the shipping date twice.

    Yes, and that makes me want to use a decidedly irregular expression:
    #@*$^&@#$&#!!!
  2. Re:.NET regexps and Microsoft's documentation by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft's documentation reads like a novel compared to IBM's. The typical IBM manual has the following format:

    PAGE 1:

    [COMMAND1] is executed by typing the word [command1] followed by the argument string, followed by enter. The argument string consists of a sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by whitespace characters.

    [COMMAND2] is executed by typing the word [command2] followed by the argument string, followed by enter. The argument string consists of a sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by whitespace characters.

    [COMMAND3] is executed by typing the word [command3] followed by the argument string, followed by enter. The argument string consists of a sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by whitespace characters.

    PAGE 2:

    THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

    ...and so on and so on.

    Regarding this last IBM tradition (that others have tried to copy but few have truly mastered), the Spruce DVD Maestro manual has a page with the following text:

    Blank page.
    (mostly)

    RMN
    ~~~

  3. Ummm.... by MemeRot · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Let's be precise in our use of language, or not."

    Very compressed contentlessness.

  4. Where's Clippy when ya need him .. by TheViffer · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I see that you are writing a regular expression"

    --
    -- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.