Regular Expression Matching can be Ugly and Slow

http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=90

by bdfh42 • 16 years ago

42 9 16 years ago

mlLK2• 16 years ago

Although this might not be applicable given the topic, someone might as well say it:

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

As a sort of 'untold' rule of thumb, I avoid writing regex scripts like the plague and let my macros do all the globbing. Although I'm sure writing stuff in bash or C on a regular basis would trump this rule altogether, but, then again, I also avoid writing/reading anything in bash or C like the plague as well. sighs

fragmede• 16 years ago

The original quote is: “If you have a problem and you think awk(1) is the solution, then you have two problems.” -David Tilbrook (http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247)

icefox• 16 years ago

What if my only other choice was sed or perl?

Hexstream• 16 years ago

Well, there are problems for which regular expressions are a perfect solution.

The problem is when you try to do something like use regular expressions to match HTML. If you know the least bit of formal grammar theory, you'll know how maladapted that is.

baddox2• 16 years ago

To be fair, regexes can still be used when parsing a CFG.

Regular Expression Matching can be Ugly and Slow

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