Thoughts regular expressions in, for example sed

[Paul Smith]

On Sat, 2013-01-12 at 19:21 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> 2013/1/12 Hormatzhan Yiltiz <hyiltiz at gmail.com>:
> > That is, of course, is not something that we want. AT MOST, it can be
> > just deemed as a feature for *sed*, or even installing the core system is
> > out of the question.
> > In this case, I strongly agree with Paul.
> 
> Anyway, I think it could happen if it is created from scratch as
> something entirely new with another name, not supposed to be
> compatible with anything. If it's good and consistent (and known…),
> people might want to use it

But we already have that.

That's what I've been saying all week: learn to use Perl.  Or Python.
Or Lua, Ruby, etc. etc.

If you want to learn UNIX tools like sed, grep, and awk, then learn them
as they are, they won't change... that's precisely why people use them!
If you want to learn something completely different, there are PLENTY of
options that already exist.

> >> 2013/1/12 Paul Smith <paul at mad-scientist.net>:
> >> > On Sat, 2013-01-12 at 15:05 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> >> >> Maybe it's time for ”the next version” (total remake) of the whole
> >> >> concept of regular expressions and give it a few decades.
> >> >> The old ”version” could then be referred to as ”regular exceptions”…
> >> >
> >> > So, no, not gonna happen.
> >>
> >> That's because everyone says that it's not going to happen…
> >> People said that about lots of things 30 years ago, and many of those
> >> things doesn't even exist today…

But many still do... such as many UNIX tools.  Sed and awk, for example,
are almost 35 years old.