crocs
Dev tools
regex builder
SHOW HN2017
105points
55comments
#434of 2,242 in 2017
Top 20%of 2017 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
4 positive, 7 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 9 critical, out of 21 comments about the project. Thread score -0.23.
Idea: 4 for, 4 againstDesign: 0 for, 5 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Readable and easier to reason about than raw regex
From 2 comments
I have a similar lib in JS that uses either regexps or plain strings for the leafs, and combinators to implement the various regexp operators. It is useful for maintainability.…
pygy_ on HNI always wanted to do something like this. Because I always forgot how to do the 'look ahead' assertions. I even named the library 'hu_regex', where 'hu' stands for human, but…
rajaravivarma_r on HN
Interesting idea similar to existing combinator libraries
From 2 comments
Regex combinators are quite common in functional languages (where it works quite better than in python). One particular advantage compared to Regex syntax is that you stay inside…
Drup on HNI always liked this idea (reminiscent of emacs rx dsl). But I'm not sure I'd be using it that often...
agumonkey on HN
Objections
Harder to learn than standard regex syntax
From 2 comments
Really cool concept, yet not practical in my opinion. The classes and functions called to replace the regex I consider to be harder to learn than the initial regex. With regex…
matthberg on HNI don't really think this is more readable than the regex itself once it starts to get complex, like they all do. Maybe if this was implemented on a prefix notation language it…
stonewhite on HN
Debugging errors is hard since it delegates to Python re
From 1 comment
(Separate comment addressing the library itself.) I find the naming of the classes off. Why not call X as Any? Why use nouns for some things, and verbs for others? I found…
reikonomusha on HN
Naming of classes is confusing (Include, Exclude, Seq, Times)
From 2 comments
(Separate comment addressing the library itself.) I find the naming of the classes off. Why not call X as Any? Why use nouns for some things, and verbs for others? I found…
reikonomusha on HNI also think the naming is really bad and can be improved. The central problem is that you're using action words for a descriptive API. You should use something like "Repeating"…
Asooka on HN
Regexes are rarely generated programmatically, so little need
From 1 comment
How often do you programmatically generate regexes though? I tend to find that regex patterns are effectively constants in the program And if it's just for readability it seems a…
anentropic on HN
Requests
Operator overloading for repeats and alternation
From 2 comments
Interesting, how does this compare to PyParsing[1]? It seems that pyparsing does a lot of this already. Not that you shouldn't write your own, mind you! Some improvements could…
orf on HNI also think the naming is really bad and can be improved. The central problem is that you're using action words for a descriptive API. You should use something like "Repeating"…
Asooka on HN
Rename classes to more descriptive names
From 3 comments
(Separate comment addressing the library itself.) I find the naming of the classes off. Why not call X as Any? Why use nouns for some things, and verbs for others? I found…
reikonomusha on HNI also think the naming is really bad and can be improved. The central problem is that you're using action words for a descriptive API. You should use something like "Repeating"…
Asooka on HNSeq is odd, to me Seq('a', 'm') says it matches 'am'. Why not overload X to support filtered forms instead? E.g X() is ".", X(from_, to_) is $from-$to, X(items) is [$items] and…
masklinn on HN
Support for parsing existing regexes
From 1 comment
(Separate comment addressing the library itself.) I find the naming of the classes off. Why not call X as Any? Why use nouns for some things, and verbs for others? I found…
reikonomusha on HN
Questions
How does this compare to pyparsing or parser combinators
From 2 comments
Interesting, how does this compare to PyParsing[1]? It seems that pyparsing does a lot of this already. Not that you shouldn't write your own, mind you! Some improvements could…
orf on HNHi, what's the diference between this project and a parser combinator?
carlochess on HN
Why not use Python verbose regex mode
From 1 comment
I'm confused. Doesn't Python offer verbose regular expressions complete with comments? https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#re.VERBOSE ``` a = re.compile(r"""\d + # the…
ddebernardy on HN
Alternatives named
rx.el in Emacs
From 1 comment
In case you aren't aware of this, what you've made is very similar to the rx.el[1] that's shipped with Emacs since 21.1 (released in 2001). Many of the comments here are…
avar on HN
CL-PPCRE tree syntax
From 1 comment
In Common Lisp, the library CL-PPCRE [0] is used for regexes, and has an "AST"-syntax like this. It supports full Perl-compatible regular expressions in both the tree syntax as…
reikonomusha on HN
pyparsing
From 1 comment
Interesting, how does this compare to PyParsing[1]? It seems that pyparsing does a lot of this already. Not that you shouldn't write your own, mind you! Some improvements could…
orf on HN
Python VerbalExpressions
From 1 comment
A more mature version: https://github.com/VerbalExpressions/PythonVerbalExpressions
rohitpaulk on HN
compose-regexp.js
From 1 comment
I have a similar lib in JS that uses either regexps or plain strings for the leafs, and combinators to implement the various regexp operators. It is useful for maintainability.…
pygy_ on HN