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

[Stefan Heimann <lists@stefanheimann.net>]

On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 04:04:24PM -0700, David Brown wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 10:56:33PM +0200, Stefan Heimann wrote:
> 
> > "[^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*"
> > 
> > are not easy to read, but with the ocamllex syntax it is even more
> > difficult:
> > 
> > '"'[^'"''\\']*('\\'_[^'"''\\']*)*'"'
> 
> But don't you find:
> 
>    '"'  [^ '"' '\\' ]*  ( '\\' _ [^ '"' '\\']* )*
> 
> easier to read.  I certainly do.

For me there is too much "noise" in the regular expression. All the
single quotes do not have a meaning, the just say "this is a
character". But I know that " or x is a character, I don't think
writing '"' or 'x' makes this fact clearer.
 
> Perl even has a mode where whitespace can be inserted into regexps to
> make them more readable.

That's right, but you don't have to use single quotes around every
character.

Bye,
  Stefan

-- 
Stefan Heimann
http://www.stefanheimann.net :: personal website.
http://cvsshell.sf.net       :: CvsShell, a console based cvs client.

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