Builtin regex (Was: How to complex switch?)

[KennyTM~]

On May 13, 11 12:14, Ary Manzana wrote:
> On 5/12/11 6:42 PM, KennyTM~ wrote:
>> On May 12, 11 19:13, Matthew Ong wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> Anyway to include this cool feature of switch with D in the near future?
>>
>> Why the obsession with 'switch'? 'if' works fine.
>>
>>>
>>> switch(str){
>>> // regexp
>>> case "abc", "def", "as+b?": s1(); break;
>>>
>>> case "za+", "wd?", "aaa": s2(); break;
>>>
>>> default: s3();
>>> }
>>
>> Regex isn't even a built-in feature, why would a 'switch' should support
>> it.
>
> How about making regex a built-in feature with this syntax: /regex/ ?
>
> I didn't use regex a lot before I started using Ruby. The thing is, in
> Ruby it's so easy to use regex that I just started using them a lot more
> than before. Of course, ruby has built-in operators for matching regexs,
> so maybe that should also be added to the language (it's the =~
> operator, but in D it should be a different one.)

IIRC it was once there, but very soon removed in the 0.x era (can't find 
that changelog). You can't distinguish between division and regex 
literal in the parser with this syntax.

See:
  - http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/faq.html#regexp_literals
  - http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/regular-expression.html