"Eric Niebler" <eric@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:41798CEF.4040807@boost-consulting.com...
Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
<Schalk_Cronje@McAfee.com> wrote in message:
Would anyone be interested in having a perl-like regex shortcut notation?
<snip>
// [1] Substitutes first occurrence and copy (calls boost::regex_replace) // perl: ($s2=$str) =~ s/(BLAH)/Hooray/; std::string s2= _s / "(BLAH)" / "Hooray" / str;
Something like this would fit in easily with Eric Niebler's xpressive library. In fact, I suggested it, but Eric said it was "too cute". Perhaps we should convene a focus group to discuss the subject. ;-)
It looks like the focus group is now in session ;-)
In fact, you could use almost completely emulate perl syntax if you want to:
string str = ...; sregex rex = ...;
str ^= _s/rex/"c++ sux, perl rulz!!"/_g;
This is closer to what I had in mind originally. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you want to poke holes in the idea), you don't get the closing slash unles flags are provided. (Flag _e would be particularly interesting.)
It's certainly cute, and it would be an interesting exersice. It is also not particularly appealing to me, since the only reason I wrote a C++ regex engine in the first place was because I strongly disliked perl's syntax. And to me, it seems less like a domain-specific embeded language than like simply trying to write perl in C++
So you won't be contributing to the Boost.Perl library which I'm planning to write as soon as ISO Perl is complete? ;-)
-- an endeavor of dubious value.
I basically agree with your analysis, which is why I didn't press the issue. Jonathan