From: Michael Maxwell (mmaxwell@casl.umd.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 02 2007 - 13:24:55 CST
Asmus Freytag wrote:
>> Depending on how many accented letters a language uses,
>> writing the equivalent expression manually can be both
>> tedious and error-prone.
I replied:
>> Aren't there two issues here that need to be separated:
>>
>> (1) the issue of what some regex *means*, e.g. what ^X
>> means, where X is some regex.
>>
>> (2) the question of how easy it is to enter X on a computer.
Asmus Freytag replied:
> In ASCII/English these are tied up inextricably, so that you
> can't always get good guidance on what is the correct
> (expected) way to extend these to other sets/scripts/languages.
I realize it may be difficult to extend ASCII conventions to other scripts etc., but I think that should be viewed as a problem of type (1) above, and quite distinct from problems of type (2), which are the "tedious and error-prone" problems.
>> I would hate to make the meaning of some regex
>> counter-intuitive just because it's hard to type with today's
>> software.
>
> I don't think I was advocating that.
No, of course not. But worrying too much about the "tedious and error-prone" kinds of problems means that we might accidently end up with the counter-intuitive type problem.
Mike Maxwell
CASL/ U Md
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