[boost] Re: Announcing: xpressive

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-18 15:13:36

"Joel de Guzman" <joel_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Same here. I dislike REs a lot. It gives me a mild headache whenever I have
> to read understand one. "(hello )+world" is ok--It's the more complex stuff
> that gives me an eye strain. For instance, from the regex manual:
>  "\\A(\\d{3,4})[- ]?(\\d{4})[- ]?(\\d{4})[- ]?(\\d{4})\\z". I really hate 
> those escapes. I also hate the fact that you can't format the code and 
> sprinkle it with whitespace. The ugliness of the RE syntax is one of the 
> motivating forces that made me write Spirit.

Python's re module has a VERBOSE flag that lets you embed arbitrary
whitespace and comments in regular expressions.  FWIW.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com