Re: [Caml-list] ocamllex, regular expression syntax

[Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr>]

Hi,

[...]
> But the regular expression syntax in the Str module looks "normal" to
> me.
> 
> Regular expressions like this
> 
> "[^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*"
> 
> are not easy to read,

I suppose you did not try this, since it is not a legal regular
expression. I guess you mean

"[^\\"\\]*(\\.[^\\"\\]*)*"

(Hence, the ``normal looking'' of those reg-exps does not imply simple,
clear, and natural syntax !)

> but with the ocamllex syntax it is even more
> difficult:
>
> '"'[^'"''\\']*('\\'_[^'"''\\']*)*'"'
> 
> (and harder to write).

It is not so clear to me: the ' conventions are exactly those of the
language (hence there is no need to \\ the " symbols), the _ gets its
"normal" meaning of ``whatever'' or ``catch all case'' pattern...

> Is this just for historical reason or is there a practical reason for
> this syntax? I'm just curious...

It's just natural: you would start by giving syntax to match chars,
hence you ``naturally'' write them inside quotes following the Caml
convention. The rest of the regular expressions constructs,
succession, alternative, repetitition, range and catch-all just follow
almost automatically.

Regards,

Pierre Weis

INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~weis/


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