- From: Ian Hickson <exxieh@bath.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:27:19 -0000
- To: wmperry@aventail.com, Bert Bos <Bert.Bos@sophia.inria.fr>
- Cc: www-style@w3.org
There have been two main arguments against regexp: complexity for the user, and complexity for the implementor. Another recap is at the bottom... Ian Graham said: >I now tend to think that adding regex stuff would >simply cloud this simplicity, and make the whole >thing harder to use. Not at all, since no one is *required* to use regexp. Just the same as having regexp in editors' find and replace dialog boxes doesn't mean everyone *has" to use them. >Too slow or cumbersome to implement Well, we hear from Bill that: > Regular expressions are not that expensive if you precompile them and >just keep the regex_t hanging around instead of the much less efficient way >of just recompiling the regexp every time. This is similar to what the >perl 'study' command does for regexps I believe. > And like someone pointed out before, regular expressions have been around >for years, and highly efficient (and free :) implementations exist for just >about any platform. I personally use regexps on 15 different platforms >(mostly unix, but occasionally crosses over to NT/95 just fine) in my own >programs. So I guess css implementors can always ask Bill for help :-) (sorry bill!) RECAP again: *strongly for* Braden N. McDaniel Ian Hickson Todd Fahrner William M. Perry (Bill) *for* Aymeric Poulain Maubant Carl Johan Berglund Eric A. Meyer (as long as it's not the *only* way of doing things) Sevo Stille Tim Bagot *against* Albert Lunde Bert Bos Frank Boumphrey Ian Graham *strongly against* David Perrell Sho Kuwamoto Victoria Rosenfeld *no opinion* Andrew n Marshall Stephanos Piperoglou Steven Pemberton 9 to 7, 3 abstaining. Seems quite evenly split, so I get the feeling that you (the wg members) will take the easy option of not including it :-( -- Ian Hickson -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 Info: www.geekcode.com GIT/M/S d->-- s+: a--- C++(+++)>$ U P L+ !E W+++ N+ o? K? w@ O- !M V- PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t 5+++>++++ X- R(+++) tv b++(+++) DI++ D++ G e(*)>+++++ h!()(--) !r y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
Received on Wednesday, 11 March 1998 17:36:44 UTC