Java's Regexp Sucks!!!

[kramer31]

What is this CDATA crap? Has Sun never heard of escape characters.

Whenever I have to use Java's regular expression engine, it takes me
hours to do what I could do in minutes with Perl.

WTF?

Why didn't Sun just rip off Perl's regexp syntax and OOify it or make
regexes primitives?

Fancy-schmancy java crap.

On the other hand, I do like the OO nature of Java (mostly), the
stability and (mostly) readability.

 

[Claudio Nieder]

Hi,

What is this CDATA crap? Has Sun never heard of escape characters.

No CDATA on http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/regex/
Pattern.html

Why didn't Sun just rip off Perl's regexp syntax and OOify it or make
regexes primitives?

To me it looks like Perl except the double \ because \ is already special
in Java Strings.

claudio
--
Claudio Nieder, Talweg 6, CH-8610 Uster, Tel +4179 357 6743,
www.claudio.ch

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

What is this CDATA crap? Has Sun never heard of escape characters.

CDATA is, AFAIK, the XML type that means that the text within is raw

Whenever I have to use Java's regular expression engine, it takes me
hours to do what I could do in minutes with Perl.

Why? Java's regex IS Perl's, for the most part:

Why didn't Sun just rip off Perl's regexp syntax and OOify it or make
regexes primitives?

Why not OOify it? Which do you prefer:
new RegexMatcher(new GreedyQuantifier(new Star("a")));

or:
Pattern.compile("a*");
?

I like the latter myself. Java does the former internally (read the
java.util.regex.Pattern sources). It's not terribly pretty.

 

[Roedy Green]

Whenever I have to use Java's regular expression engine, it takes me
hours to do what I could do in minutes with Perl.

It that because Perl syntax is superior or simply that you already
know Perl but don't know Java? My understanding is Java's regexes were
based on Perl's.

It may just be the docs. Have a look at my explanations.

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/regex.html

 

[Tom Anderson]

What is this CDATA crap?

What CDATA crap?

Seriously, i don't know what you mean. CDATA is an XML thing, not a regexp
thing. I suspect you're confused. Is it that you;re using some file format
where regexps live in an XML document, and you've failed to understand the
boundary between the two?

Why didn't Sun just rip off Perl's regexp syntax and OOify it

That's exactly what they did.

Fancy-schmancy java crap.

You're an idiot. Get off my newsgroup. HTH.

tom