RE: [boost] Re: Announcing: xpressive

From: Brock Peabody (brock.peabody_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-18 10:49:59

> -----Original Message-----
> From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden] [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]]
> On Behalf Of Joel de Guzman
> Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 7:41 AM
> To: Boost mailing list
> Subject: Re: [boost] Re: Announcing: xpressive
> 
> David Bakin <d.bakin_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > And composition:  being able to build a RE from separately specified REs
> in
> > a modular fashion.  And abstraction too: passing parameters into an RE
> > (e.g., once you write your balanced-delimiter RE you should be able to
> pass
> > in the front-delimiter (e.g. "[") and back-delimiter ("]").
> >
> > Frankly, I think it is time to stop calling them regular expressions,
> which
> > have a definite "computer science" meaning (only operators concatenate,
> > alternate, and kleene star over a fixed alphabet).  But this is a battle
> I
> > will not fight since the outcome is obvious.
> 
> Sounds like Spirit :-)

Maybe this is a silly question, but do we need Regular Expressions now that
we have Spirit?  I've never used regular expressions before so I may be
missing something, but the syntax is frightening compared to EBNF.  Could
the dynamic syntax be EBNF too?