compile-time regex redux

[janderson]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> That would help I suppose, but at the same time regexps themselves 
>> have a tendancy to end up being 'write-only' code.  The heavy use of 
>> them in perl is I think a large part of what gives it a rep as a 
>> write-only language.   Heh heh.  I just found this regexp for matching 
>> RFC 822 email addresses:
>>     http://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html
>> (the one at the bottom of the page)
> 
> I agree that non-trivial regexes can be pretty intimidating - but 
> writing templates to do the same will be even more intimidating.

Agreed!  They are both intimidating which is not a good thing.  There 
has to be a better way.

-Joel