Re: [9fans] non greedy regular expressions

[John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie>]

> Now. If the leftmost-longest match is usable for my problem, I am fine
> with C + regexp(6). If not I only see the possibility to use
> perl/python nowadays (if I don't want to go mad like above).

There is another option: yacc.  I'm not saying it's simpler
than perl or python, but it's not much harder and it's more
a more general tool.  The resulting code will be fast, if
you care.

> My question then is: wouldn't it be better to switch to the
> leftmost-first paradigm, hence open possible use of (non-)greedy
> operators, and in a way contribute to an accord with perl/python
> syntax?  And use a good algorithm for that all? But maybe it's not
> worth and the current state is just sufficient...

Switching semantics in existing tools is rarely a good idea.  Too many
things break.  If anyone is going to do this, and it won't be me, then
it needs to be done in a way that doesn't break anything, like when
UNIX switched from basic to extended regular expressions and added a
-e option to grep.
--
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282