Re: [boost] [xpressive] regex_replace() issue.

From: Robert Dailey (rcdailey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-14 21:08:11

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Eric Niebler <eric_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> Robert Dailey wrote:
> >
> > Thank you very much for helping. I wouldn't go as far as to say it isn't
> > hard, because that looks very hard IMHO. I was hoping for something a
> little
> > more intuitive and built-in. Instead of going through all of that work I
> > will probably first try to find a different third party regular
> expression
> > library that can automate this task for me so that I can keep my code a
> > little cleaner and focus on the actual task.
>
> Hm, OK. Good luck. Maybe Boost.Regex has this feature.
>
> > I know that other regex
> > libraries in other languages provide such a feature. Perhaps in the
> future
> > Boost.Xpressive can be extended to provide this behavior. You could
> simply
> > create a version of regex_replace() that takes a functor as the
> replacement
> > instead of a string.
>
> Nothing is simple. It would require careful design work, tests and docs.
> If you feel strongly about it (and it /would/ be useful), you can open a
> feature request on svn.boost.org. Or even better, submit a patch. This
> is open source, after all, and I welcome your participation.
>
> --
> Eric Niebler
> Boost Consulting
> www.boost-consulting.com
>

Hey Eric,

I ended up using the method you proposed anyway mainly because I love boost
so much and also because you did all of the work for me, so I couldn't let
that go to waste. I barely had to make any changes anyhow. I realize it is
open source but I really don't like modifying third party libraries unless
I'm absolutely stuck with it. In other words, if I can get the original
authors of the library to make the changes for me then I will wait for that
instead of doing it myself. In addition, the boost library implementations
intimidate me (they use a very complex design, structure, and syntax that
takes a couple of minutes to follow). The boost implementations "think
outside of the box", which is why it looks so exceedingly different from
other implementations I've seen. It definitely requires a whole different
state of mind. My whole point in saying all of this is that I'm not
confident I can provide as worthy of a patch as someone who works on the
boost library on a daily basis, but I will most certainly try. For the most
part I would just be taking your source and making changes from there.

In any case, I split up your source a little and placed them into more
generic hpp files and I've put that into the engine for our game. You were
very helpful, and I thank you. I'll submit a patch later on when I have time
to mess with it. For future reference, where can I submit patches? Thanks
again.