Adoption of perl/javascript-style regexp syntax

[mats cronqvist]

Robert Virding <rvirding@REDACTED> writes:

> 2009/6/3 mats cronqvist <masse@REDACTED>
>
>> "Richard O'Keefe" <ok@REDACTED> writes:
>>
>> > That pain level is there for a good reason: if the Erlang string
>> > syntax is giving you that much of a headache, it's because STRINGS ARE
>> > WRONG and you should almost certainly be using trees instead.
>>
>>   Alas, re wants strings, and there's not much I can do about that.
>
>
> Not quite true. The *underlying implementation* wants the regexp as a string
> but this does not mean that the user has to supply it as a string. You could
> very well allow the regexp as an AST (as well as?) and then internally
> convert it to a string.


  Scheez. The re module, as it exists in R13, wants strings. Full stop.

  You could of course write a different front end to pcre, or a pure
  erlang regexp module, or an infinite number of other fine products for
  which this isn't true, but that really has no bearing on this
  discussion.

  mats