[Smee-development] RE: regex and Smee

[Pennell, D. <DPe...@qu...>]

Vassili,

Thanks for the upadate.  I'm going to follow your recommendation and start
with option 4.  By the time I get done with that your December meeting
should have transpired.

If the new version of Regex does end up as a Cincom product, will it still
be available for porting to other platforms?

-david

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vassili Bykov [mailto:va...@pa...] 
> Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 2:47 AM
> To: Pennell, David
> Subject: RE: regex and Smee
> 
> Hello David,
> 
>  > > Here are the differences I noticed:
> > > >
> > > >          QuantifierPrefix ::
> > > >                  *
> > > >                  +
> > > >                  ?
> > > >                  { DecimalDigits }
> > > >                  { DecimalDigits , }
> > > >                  { DecimalDigits , DecimalDigits }
> > > >
> > > > The {...} construct is not supported by Regex (this is probably 
> > > > the worst problem with it).
> > >
> > > I'm not following you here.  What do you mean by "the (...) 
> > > construct"?
> 
> It's the "{...} construct" (curly braces). Something like 
> "a{3,5}" is supposed to match between 3 and 5 occurrences of 
> a, and Regex does not understand that.
> 
>  > I remember you mentioning a new version when we talked at StS.
>  > What is the new version about?
>  > What is the status?
>  > Are you interested in adding ECMAScript support or 
> providing  > a mechansim that would allow me to?
> 
> The new version is a nearly complete rewrite of the whole 
> thing. It does everything Python regular expressions do, so I 
> expect it is a superset of what is required for ECMAScript. 
> The status is the dreaded "90% complete". 
> I have the basic matcher working and functionally complete 
> (and 170+ tests to prove it). However, the optimizations I 
> wanted to get done to improve matching speed are not 
> done--and one of the reasons I rewrote so much of it was to 
> allow those optimizations. I haven't worked on it for a 
> while, and not sure when I would be able to get back to it. I 
> need either a happy coincidence of being in the mood to write 
> some code when there is a long holiday, or Regex being made 
> an official product. On our planning meeting next month we 
> are going to consider that, so if it happens I might get some 
> time to work on it "officially". This is pretty much all I 
> can say at the moment.
> 
>  > It looks like I have the following choices:
> > > 1 roll my own ECMAScript compatible regex engine
> > > 2 try to map ECMAScript semantics to Regex11 semantics (I 
> don't even 
> > > know if this is doable)
> > > 3 wait for the new version of your code (assuming that it 
> will be or 
> > > can be made to be ECMAScript compliant)
> > > 4 cut a first release with the current Regex code, document the 
> > > differences and then go to 1,2 or 3.
> > >
> > > What do you recommend?
> 
> I wish I could suggest (3), but before the meeting in 
> December I don't want to give empty promises. How about (4) 
> to begin with, and we'll choose between 1, 2 and 3 once the 
> "official" Regex status is clear?
> 
>  > A couple of other questions:
> > > - Doesn't your ":characterMethod:" syntax conflict?
> 
> Yes, it does. In the new version I keep this option (and even 
> extend it to allow inlined Smalltalk blocks), but it is 
> accessible using the syntax used for syntax extensions in 
> Python regex (":isDigit:" becomes "(?#isDigit)"), so there is 
> no problem with that.
> 
> > > - Do you support 16bit characters?
> 
> Good question. I never checked. I don't think I do any 
> dispatch on character codes anywhere, or anything like that, 
> so I expect that they either work, or would work after a bit 
> of tweaking.
> 
>  > Do you mind if I copy this thread to the Smee list - that way
> > > it gets archived.
> 
> By all means!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --Vassili
> 
> 
> > >
> 
> --
> Vassili Bykov [|] <va...@pa...> VisualWorks 
> Engineering, Tools Project
>