• @Skullgrid
    link
    08 hours ago

    I swear to god,someone must have written an intermediary language between regex and actual programming, or I’m going to eventaully do it before I blow my fucking brains out.

    • @BassTurd
      link
      58 hours ago

      How do you think that would look? Regex isn’t particularly complicated, just a bit to remember. I’m trying to picture how you would represent a regex expression in a higher level language. I think one of its biggest benefits is the ability to shove so much information into a random looking string. I suppose you could write functions like, startswith, endswith, alpha(4), or something like that, but in the end, is that better?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        58 hours ago

        People have unironically done that. No, it isn’t better. The fundamental mental model is the same.

        • @Skullgrid
          link
          27 hours ago

          I want to see their unironic attempts, maybe they’re useful to me at least if they’re not better.

          The fundamental mental model is the same.

          It’s not the fundemental model that I have a problem with for Regex, it’s the fucking brainfuck tier syntax

      • @Skullgrid
        link
        48 hours ago

        I suppose you could write functions like, startswith, endswith, alpha(4), or something like that,

        yes.

        but in the end, is that better?

        YES.

        startswith('text');
        lengthMustBe(5);
        onlyContain(CHARSETS.ALPHANUMERICS); 
        endswith('text');
        

        is much more legible than []],[.<{}>,]‘text’[[]]][][)()(a-z,0-9){}{><}<>{}‘text’{}][][

        • @BassTurd
          link
          58 hours ago

          Assuming “text” in your example is a placeholder for a 5 digit alpha string, it can be written like this in regex: /[a-zA-Z0-9]{5}/

          If ”text" is literal, then your statement is impossible.

          I think that when it gets to more complex expressions like a phone number with country code that accepts different formats, the verbosity of a higher level language will be more confusing, or at least more difficult to take in quickly.

    • @marcos
      link
      18 hours ago

      intermediary language between regex and actual programming

      It’s called Haskell.