Re: Regular Expressions and Standard COBOL (was Re: Use of Class conditions in COBOL)


"Richard Brady" <rrllbrrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:iiSji.154348$Sa4.52581@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[snip]

Other than the personal attacks, which I deem quite unnecessary, (lame?
maybe not as thorough, but lame?) betwixt two such intelligent,
thoughtful people and other thinking people who have commented as well
(William, Howard, Charles, Alistair & Daniel and Doc), I found the
discussion quite enlightening. I thank all of you for contributing.

"[B]ut lame?" Well, actually, yes!

I began programming in C in the late 80's (Microsoft C 5.0)
and began using C professionally in the early 90's. I was aware
of regular expressions since the 80's and have studied and,
occasionally, used the form in question for at least six years.
The question of validating e-mail addresses using regular
expressions was raised; I investigated; then posted a regular
expression for doing just that--one I understood to be
adequate to the task.

Then the code in question was posted. While I did not know
what "\w" entailed, I did know that the regular expression was
inadequate (having seen one that was) and I could see that the
code was clumsy in its attempt to deal with two "@" characters.
I made no further comment about the code (my calling the "\w"
a perverion, intending "non-standard usage", was a comment
about Microsoft).

One definition of "lame" is "weak; inadequate; clumsy". Two
weeks and two renamed threads later, the regular expression
and the same code, modified to COBOL, was presented in a
post to me. As one with sufficient profressional qualification and
knowledge to make judgments about such code--code that I
found to be inadequate and clumsy--I used the simple inclusive
term "lame" to describe it.

[snip]

[...] I am ashamed that I
caused such a row.

Mr Brady, you didn't! It was a disagreement about the code
between two people with different points of view.



.

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