Re: [ANN] RegexKit - An Objective-C Framework for Regular Expressions Using the PCRE Library
Re: [ANN] RegexKit - An Objective-C Framework for Regular Expressions Using the PCRE Library
- Subject: Re: [ANN] RegexKit - An Objective-C Framework for Regular Expressions Using the PCRE Library
- From: "Mark Munz" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 09:39:45 -0700
> > It definitely seems like great is the enemy of good here.
>
> I think that viewpoint is hard to defend.
>
> It's always been possible for developers to use regexps in their own
> code, whether by using the POSIX functions, or by linking in a third
> party library (Oniguruma probably being the best match for Cocoa
> strings right now as it has native UTF-16 support). Is it fair,
> therefore, to criticise Apple for electing to wait until the ICU
> implementation had all the features they felt they needed for really
> great regexp support? I don't think so. It isn't exactly a huge
> effort using a third-party library for now.
I think you just made my argument for me. Apple is waiting for all the
features they felt they needed for really great regexp support. (the
bug description seemed a bit vague on what it was they were waiting
for, more like one of those high-level "we need some APIs" bugs)
> Put another way, since we have plenty of options right now, why rush
> to make an official "NSRegularExpression" (or CFRegularExpression...)
> before there's a significant advantage in doing so?
That argument could be made for virtually anything Apple does or
doesn't do. There are existing options for animation, advanced
controls, data management. Those can all be done right now, but the
new APIs make the whole task easier. That's all I'm asking for, make
the task of using regexp easier (especially given how commonplace it
now is in everything but Cocoa).
I'm just beginning to look at CocoaICU (first heard of it in this
thread), but if one guy can do that -- certainly Apple could do
something similar.
When I spoke to some folks at Apple at WWDC 2006, I was told that ICU
was the future direction. That's great! I just would like to see that
future before 2010! Unfortunately, I think that is exactly what we'll
have to wait for.
(fyi -- 2010 is just a guess as to when 10.6 might show up)
> I would also guess that the regexp issue has had more bugs filed
> against it in recent months because it seems that more people are
> coming from scripting languages where regexps are widely available,
> as opposed to C where they're really only available on Unix-like
> systems (or with a third-party library...).
Very true. In fact, I think Obj-c/c++ developers are the only group
with a high level framework that doesn't have built-in support for
regexp.
--
Mark Munz
unmarked software
http://www.unmarked.com/
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