Problems? Is your data what you think it is? | |
PerlMonks |
comment on |
( [id://3333]=superdoc: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
Why do we have to apologise to those that don't take the time to see beyond the terse but immensely powerful notation that makes up the language 'perl 5 regex'? My Dad would never have managed to wrap his brain around [(x-h)^2]/a^2 + [(y-k)^2]/b^2 = 1., although that didn't stop him from accurately (within obvious tolorances) cutting an oval from a piece of 1/2 inch ply using nothing but a piece of string, two nails and a piece of chalk. To him, the whole concept of algebraic notation was an anathema, but it's doubtful if there are many people reading this for whom that formula isn't eminently readable. The difference? Education. My father left school aged 12 and started his 10 years apprenticship as a carpenter aged 14. He never had the opportunity to learn algebra. The following short extract from here
describes (roughly) the same thing as n + 235U --> 141Ba + 92Kr + 3n Now they both mean precious little to me, but to those that live and work in the field of nuclear physics, I'm pretty sure that the latter concise form is an infinitely less unweildy and more practical to work with in correspondance, notes, reports and papers as well as in aggregate works in which this formula is only a part. In the same way, regexes are simply a short-hand notation that allow the capturing of complex aggregate programming concepts in a concise, weildy fashion. For people to dismiss regexes, much less the whole of perl(*), as "line noise" because they haven't bothered to take the time to understand them, and the power they represent, requires no apology from us, but from them. (*) As one who did exactly this, professionally, twice, I hereby apologise to the perl community at large, and Mr. Wall in particular for this heinous crime! Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller In reply to Re: Re: Re: (jeffa) 5Re: More Variable length regex issues
by BrowserUk
|
|