VerbalExpressions – JavaScript library that helps construct regular expressions

https://github.com/jehna/VerbalExpressions#

by shadeless • 13 years ago

18 9 13 years ago

github.com

peteratt2• 13 years ago

Damn, this is so simple yet so powerful I can't believe it's the first time anyone has thought about it.

DavidBradbury• 13 years ago

I can't believe it's the first time anyone has thought about it.

Implying this is?

peteratt2• 13 years ago

Not implying that, but haven't seen something as similar and high-level before.

nahname• 13 years ago

I have always struggled writing a regular expressions. Even after being successful in writing one, I could not retain what it did once I returned to it. This library is definitely for people like me.

__david__• 13 years ago

That's cute and on one hand I like the concept, but on the other hand I find that's exactly how normal terse regexs read to me anyway...

    ^https?://(?:www\.)?[^ ]*$

is way more succinct and just as easy to read as:

            .startOfLine()
            .then( "http" )
            .maybe( "s" )
            .then( "://" )
            .maybe( "www." )
            .anythingBut( " " )
            .endOfLine();

Well... assuming you know regular expressions. Which you should if you are a programmer.

AdrianRossouw• 13 years ago

i could see it useful if you had a situation where you need to programmatically generate a regex, but i don't really see myself using it much at all.

xtrumanx• 13 years ago

I kind of know regular expressions but every time I have to write one I head off to regexpal to write it. For instance, off the top of my head, I have no idea what the "?" in the parenthesis does. Usually expect a character to precede a "?", "." or "*".

I also don't use them often enough to commit all the rules to memory.

However, given VerbalExpressions, I don't think I'd have a problem building regular expressions. For a newbie, startOfLine and endOfLine is far more memorable than "^" and "$".

Which you should if you are a programmer.

You can be pretty productive programmer without knowing regular expressions. Depends on the kind of programming you do really.

AndrewDucker• 13 years ago

There are ten thousand things I "should" know as a programmer. And I use regular expressions about once per year, which is long enough for them to become unreadable between usages, and require me to spend a chunk of time looking up syntax for even the simplest of them.

hsmyers• 13 years ago

As a diabetic, I try and not over-dose on syntactic sugar...

VerbalExpressions – JavaScript library that helps construct regular expressions

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