Re: "Raw" string literals for elisp

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Mattias.

On Wed, Sep 08, 2021 at 20:24:34 +0200, Mattias Engdegård wrote:
> 8 sep. 2021 kl. 18.01 skrev Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>:

> > It is more readable in the same way Cobol was very readable

> That comparison is absurdly wrong

Oh no it's not.

> Rx is actually not verbose .....

The example you gave showed a single line string regexp being equivalent
to a six line rx expression.  That's a factor of 6.  That's verbose by
any measure.

> I do suggest you give it an honest try in a project where you are
> permitted to do so.

rx has been in Emacs, I think, since 21.1.  That was around 20 years
ago.  It hasn't caught on, to any great extent.  If it were that good,
it would have caught on.

> You will be better informed, better equipped to read other people's
> code, and may come to like it. Even if you don't, you may have
> something interesting to report from the attempt.

There are lots of ways of broadening my horizons, even within the scope
of Emacs, but there are only so many hours in a day.

> And I'll be there to answer questions!

OK, here's one: why do think rx is so little used, compared with the
string representation of regular expressions?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).