{"id":246,"date":"2006-09-14T23:51:47","date_gmt":"2006-09-14T14:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2006-09-14\/246"},"modified":"2006-09-14T23:51:47","modified_gmt":"2006-09-14T14:51:47","slug":"mre3-reviewed-on-slashdot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2006-09-14\/246","title":{"rendered":"MRE3 Reviewed on Slashdot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\nThe new\nedition<\/a> of my book Mastering\nRegular Expressions<\/a> was reviewed on\nSlashdot<\/a> today, where the reviewer generously granted me a rating<\/span> of\n“11 out of 10.” In looking over the comments people left during\nthe course of the day, I appreciated<\/span> the kind words many chimed in with\nabout the book.\n\n<\/p>

\n\nI found it amazing, though, even by Slashdot standards, the amount of\nignorance displayed in a few<\/span> of the comments. Here's an excerpt from such a\ncomment<\/span><\/a>:<\/p>\n\n

\n\nIt is true that some extensions, especially those found in perl, push the\nregular expression into Context-free or Context-sensitive territory when\nused correctly, but generally speaking, you're really asking for one\ndisaster of a Regular<\/span> Expression. You're better off using a parser.<\/span>\n\n<\/b><\/div>\n\n

Now, if you know much of anything at all about modern-day scripting\nlanguages and their regular-expression implementations, you know\nimmediately how outlandishly stupid the comment is.<\/p>\n\n

The problem with comments like this is that if the reader doesn't<\/i>\nalready understand the situation, they'll not necessarily know that the\ncomment is ignorance incarnate, and perhaps be lured in by the fancy\nmathematical words like “context-free” and actually think that\nthe comment has some validity.<\/p>\n\n

I'll be the first to warn that regular expressions are just one tool and\nthat they are certainly not the hammer for every programming nail, but\ncomments like this are basically saying that only pure DFA implementations\ncirca 1979 are worth using, and the use of any features added since then is\nbad. Geez, even before I wrote<\/span> my book, few would have espoused such an\nopinion, but it's lamentable to see it now 10 years after the first\nedition, in a discussion<\/span> of the new edition, by someone who's clearly never\nread either but even more clearly needs to. (One of the reasons I wrote<\/span> the\nbook in the first place was to try to clear up this ignorance-borne\nforeboding of regular-expression technology that one occationally\nsees.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To my family and regular readers more used to posts about Japan<\/a>, Anthony<\/a>, or with pretty photos<\/a>,\nwho may not understand anything of this post past the first paragraph, I offer<\/span> this cute picture of a just<\/span>-turned-one-year-old Anthony sweeping the\nfloor:<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/div>\n\n

The trick will be getting him to do it when he's 13! <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new edition of my book Mastering Regular Expressions was reviewed on Slashdot today, where the reviewer generously granted me a rating of \"11 out of 10.\" In looking over the comments people left during the course of the day, I appreciated the kind words many chimed in with about the book. <\/p>

I found it amazing, though, even by Slashdot standards, the amount of ignorance displayed in a few of the comments. Here's an excerpt from such a comment:<\/p>

Now, if you know much of anything at all about modern-day scripting languages and their regular-expression implementations, you know [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}