see I don't know why people hate on {perl,awk,sed}. To me, these are the best tools available for data munging and they're just too damn convenient. However, I always get the feeling that my efficiency takes a hit when I try to be too clever.
don't get me wrong. I love perl. and I use awk almost every day (mostly because I can't be bothered to remember the syntax for cut). I just find it a little weird to say regex regex regex is the only thing to improve about yourself. regexes are powerful things, but they aren't the answer to all problems. I cringe when people brandish a zero-width negative look-behind assertion when a simple index() will do. there is an interview problem I like to give that involves string prefixes and when perl people start off down the regex path, I know that they've been lured into a quagmire.
btw, if you haven't read it, the friedl book is great and I consider it the definitive text on at least the practical matters of regular expressions (and it even covers a good chunk of the CS theory behind them as well).
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see I don't know why people hate on {perl,awk,sed}. To me, these are the best tools available for data munging and they're just too damn convenient. However, I always get the feeling that my efficiency takes a hit when I try to be too clever.
don't get me wrong. I love perl. and I use awk almost every day (mostly because I can't be bothered to remember the syntax for cut). I just find it a little weird to say regex regex regex is the only thing to improve about yourself. regexes are powerful things, but they aren't the answer to all problems. I cringe when people brandish a zero-width negative look-behind assertion when a simple index() will do. there is an interview problem I like to give that involves string prefixes and when perl people start off down the regex path, I know that they've been lured into a quagmire.
btw, if you haven't read it, the friedl book is great and I consider it the definitive text on at least the practical matters of regular expressions (and it even covers a good chunk of the CS theory behind them as well).