Builtin regex (Was: How to complex switch?)

[Stewart Gordon]

On 13/05/2011 06:10, KennyTM~ wrote:
> On May 13, 11 12:14, Ary Manzana wrote:
<snip>
>> 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).

There was a builtin regexp feature added in 0.147 - I think it was a ~~ or =~ operator 
with a string either side.  I'm not sure whether it broke too much existing code or was 
just thought not right as a language builtin, but it was dropped again in 0.148.

> You can't distinguish between division and regex literal in the parser with this syntax.

And that's half the reason such a syntax has never been implemented in D.

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

Which ignores the idea of using a different notation for regexp literals.  Though it's 
probably not worth much debate when the idea of a built-in regexp type has been rejected 
as language bloat.

I think D is going the right way on the whole by leaving regexps to a library.  Though 
this does limit such possibilities as optimised regexp switches.

Stewart.