Re: modern regexes in emacs

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2019 10:27:44 -0800 (PST) Drew Adams
<address@hidden> wrote:
> > > Modern syntax is the main one.  
> > 
> > Such use of "modern" always gets on my nerves.  "Modern" is not
> > the same as "good", and likely has a very weak correlation with
> > it.  
> 
> Not to mention that "modern" has been applied to the latest
> fashion, ephemeral or not, for at least 100 years.  Today's
> modernista is tomorrow morning's has-been, but s?he sometimes
> continues to tout the same old-fashioned modernisms.

Look, the old syntax was replaced by the Unix people in the early
1980s because it was garbage. Everyone uses the new syntax, and
everyone is used to it. Sure, new doesn't always mean better, but in
this case, yes, the newer regex syntax is a whole lot better, not to
mention that it's what everyone on earth is used to.

> > They're not obsolete: they're used in grep, sed, and in Emacs.

They are not used in egrep which is now 35 years old, and all modern
seds take modern RE syntax if you ask, and everyone who uses sed asks.

> Emacs itself has been obsolete for longer than many Emacs users
> have been alive.  Emacs is dead.  Long live Emacs.

No, Emacs is not obsolete, because it's a living editor that adapts
to the times. The emacs of 2019 is very much not the Emacs of
1983 that I started with. It has shifted and adapted well with time.
But I think that many people seem to want to encase it in amber and
kill it by making it irrelevant to modern users. Luckily they won't
get their way.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger                address@hidden