[Info-vax] Unix and DCL shells

[Bob Eager]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:04:16 +0000, Dan Cross wrote:

> 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 Is that overview out of date?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.

Perhaps 'overused' is a better term. I see a lot of instances where they 
are simply not the right tool for the job. I use them where they are 
appropriate.