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From: Ed Morton <mortonspam@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 05:46:49 -0600
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On 11/20/2024 2:21 AM, Muttley@DastartdlyHQ.org wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:43:48 -0800
> merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) boring babbled:
>>>>>>> "Lawrence" == Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>
>> Lawrence> Perl was the language that made regular expressions
>> Lawrence> sexy. Because it made them easy to use.
>>
>> I'm often reminded of this as I've been coding very little in Perl these
>> days, and a lot more in languages like Dart, where the regex feels like
>> a clumsy bolt-on rather than a proper first-class citizen.
> 
> Regex itself is clumsy beyond simple search and replace patterns. A lot of
> stuff I've seen done in regex would have better done procedurally at the
> expense of slightly more code but a LOT more readability.

Definitely. The most relevant statement about regexps is this:

 > Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
 > regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

attributed to Jamie Zawinski, see 
https://blog.codinghorror.com/regular-expressions-now-you-have-two-problems/.

Obviously regexps are very useful and commonplace but if you find you 
have to use some online site or other tools to help you write/understand 
one or just generally need more than a couple of minutes to 
write/understand it then it's time to back off and figure out a better 
way to write your code for the sake of whoever has to read it 6 months 
later (and usually for robustness too as it's hard to be sure all rainy 
day cases are handled correctly in a lengthy and/or complicated regexp).

     Ed.