[Info-vax] Unix and DCL shells

[Dan Cross]

In article <l07mnrFklcmU4 at mid.individual.net>,
Bob Eager  <news0009 at eager.cx> wrote:
>On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:38:18 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/10/2024 5:00 AM, Bob Eager wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:11:24 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>> On 9 Jan 2024 23:57:19 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>>>>> Oh, I've examined the documentation (and books) in detail. But by
>>>>> that time, I'd been using REXX for years, and it does all I need.
>>>>> It's surprisingly powerful.
>>>>
>>>> I had a look at the Wikipedia overview
>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx>, and I see it gushes a lot over
>>>> the PARSE statement, but it doesn’t seem to have regular expressions.
>>>> Is that overview out of date?
>>> 
>>> REXX is a sparse language. But it has lots of libraries, and there are
>>> regexp libraries.
>>> 
>>> Personally, I think regexps are overrated! And I first started using
>>> them in 1975.
>> 
>> There is the famous quote:
>> 
>> <quote>
>> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
>> regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
>> </quote>
>> 
>> It is an obscure syntax.
>> 
>> But it is powerful and very widely available (small differences but
>> available), so my conclusion is: learn it.
>
>Oh, I learned it. Back in the 1970s, and I've kept up to date. But they 
>are still overrated.

That's sort of a weird take.  Regular expressions, in their
purest form, are simply a notation for denotating elements of
the set of regular languages.  It turns out that they're useful
for all sorts of applications.  They may be overused, but
describing them as "overrated" kind of strikes me as being
similar to describing algebra as overrated.

	- Dan C.