From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id LAA26005; Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:13:39 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA26028 for ; Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:13:38 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f7O9DVj24291; Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:13:31 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id LAA25758; Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:13:31 +0200 (MET DST) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:13:31 +0200 From: Xavier Leroy To: Miles Egan Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] standard regex package Message-ID: <20010824111331.B25250@pauillac.inria.fr> References: <20010823000625.B4229@aimlin> <20010823110821.B5828@caddr.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <20010823110821.B5828@caddr.com>; from miles@caddr.com on Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 11:08:21AM -0700 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk We all agree that the Str regexp library has problems, both on the interface side (too much global state) and on the implementation side (fails mysteriously on complex regexps). The last time this topic came up on this list, I said that we aren't opposed to put PCRE in the OCaml distribution (provided Markus agrees with that, of course). BUT: in the name of backward compatibility, we must have an Str-compatible interface to this library (same functions and same regexp syntax as in Str), in addition to the native PCRE interface. I think it can be done, but the replies I got to this request were of the form "I don't have time to do this". Also: the PCRE interface is quite heavyweight, with a zillion options whose purpose are not always clear to me. This can be a bit frightening and will need a lot of carefully worded documentation to explain that most of these options are useless 99% of the time :-) This is not a criticism towards Markus' work, more like a criticism towards Perl's and PCRE's "creeping featuritism" syndrom. So: any taker for writing this Str-compatibility layer? - Xavier Leroy ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr