Python re(gex)?
Learning and science
programming book
SHOW HN2019
How HN took it
5 positive, 2 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 2 critical, out of 9 comments about the project. Thread score +0.32.
Docs: 3 for, 0 againstIdea: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Helpful resource and well done on the book
From 3 comments
Congrats on writing and publishing this book!
nathanbarry on HNThis is a great resource. Thank you for taking the time to write this and making it available to us!
dhairya on HNThis is super helpful! I've always felt Python regex was one of the more complicated parts of the language.
spazzy81 on HN
Interesting alternative regex syntax via rxe library
From 2 comments
This is excellent, I prefer this.
PieUser on HNYou might like: https://github.com/mtrencseni/rxe So you can write: ``` username = rxe.one_or_more(rxe.set([rxe.alphanumeric(), '.', '%', '+', '-'])) domain =…
Maro on HN
Objections
Regex is hard to read and often overused; parsers are better
From 2 comments
There two kinds of text search/parse problems: - The really easy ones. A simple string search/split will do and a regex would be overkill. - The really hard ones. You'll need to…
AlexanderDhoore on HNI couldn't agree more. I honestly find it rather baffling that someone would write a book on not just regular expressions in general, but one particular variant in one particular…
IceDane on HN
Dedicated Python regex book seems unnecessary since regex is language agnostic
From 2 comments
I couldn't agree more. I honestly find it rather baffling that someone would write a book on not just regular expressions in general, but one particular variant in one particular…
IceDane on HNNone that I know of. My thought process has always been that regex was language agnostic. I think Perl has its own version that is widely used. But other than that, I do not know.
just_myles on HN
Rxe style is too verbose
From 2 comments
Too verbose, I prefer good old regular expression.
gnulinux on HN10 lines to replace maybe 20 characters. How horribly verbose.
qwsxyh on HN
Questions
Why Python regex differs from other languages
From 1 comment
> My thought process has always been that regex was language agnostic. +1 I was surprised to find that regex in python was not much different from the language I use ruby. Would…
Lordarminius on HN
Whether Python's re supports variable-length lookbehind
From 2 comments
Thanks for sharing! I only skimmed it but I liked how you include usage of the external regex module, which I hadn't realized allowed for the use of variable-length look-behinds.
danso on HNThe engine has support but the language doesn't expose it?
ErikCorry on HN
Alternatives named
rxe library
From 1 comment
You might like: https://github.com/mtrencseni/rxe So you can write: ``` username = rxe.one_or_more(rxe.set([rxe.alphanumeric(), '.', '%', '+', '-'])) domain =…
Maro on HN
CommonRegex module
From 1 comment
I actually find these too verbose. May be because I didn't know about them when I started out, was using regex in cli tools and Perl scripts. There's also a module [1] which…
asicsp on HN
Parser combinators and PEG grammars
From 2 comments
Parser combinators are the way to go. I don't use python often enough to know if such a library exists for python, but I would assume so.
IceDane on HNNo experience with them in python, but look also for PEG grammars. They are significantly simpler than the traditional tower of lexer + ambiguous limited lookahead grammar. Plus…
cben on HN