[2223] in java-interest
Re: regular expressions in Java
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glen C. Perkins)
Wed Sep 27 05:47:57 1995
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 00:41:51 -0700
To: java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM
From: Glen.Perkins@NativeGuide.com (Glen C. Perkins)
>>Several people have pointed out how valuable unicode-savvy regular
>>expressions would be to Java, but the Java team never responds to this
>>question. I wish they would.
>
>Ok, I'm on the Java team, I don't have a *CLUE* how one could express
>a regular expression that would cull Thai and Korean strings from
>a generic set of unicode strings.
>
First, thanks for answering, Chuck. Second, as a speaker of Thai and a
former teacher of Korean, I *DO* have some clues and would be willing to
offer a few after I put a little more thought into it, and quite a few
members of the Unicode Consortium live for challenges like this.
[...]
>I can also say that it would be MUCH
>more productive to have the dialog start with "These are my ideas for
>a regular expression syntax to deal with unicode."
It wouldn't have been productive at ALL for us to put a lot of thought into
it if you had already rejected the whole concept of RE in Java long ago.
Nobody wants to devote much effort to solving a problem if there is a good
chance that the reaction is just going to be "why did you waste your time
working on THAT? If you had only asked, we would have told you why we would
never even CONSIDER using RE in Java...."
>We would LOVE to have an RE languge for UNICODE, but its down somewhere
>below the Mac port I believe in priority. (No, I can't tell you when you
>can get the Mac port either :-()
>
>--Chuck
Now THAT'S a great answer (except for the Mac part ;-) ) because it means
that the RE idea hasn't already been considered and rejected. It means that
unlike waste-of-time suggestions regarding some other aspects of Java that
have already been set in stone, suggestions for a good RE language might be
of some use to you and could represent time well spent on our part. I'll
think about it and get some other unicoders thinking about it, too.
Thanks again,
__Glen__
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