Re: PATCH: simplifying regular expressions

[Ben Elliston]

On Sun, Dec 09, 2018 at 06:58:28PM -0600, Jacob Bachmeyer wrote:

> > A lot of regular expressions in DejaGnu are complex for no good
> > reason. This is because the regexps are placed inside quotes ("..")
> > wich are processed before being passed to the relevant function (be it
> > 'expect', 'regexp', 'regsub', etc). As long as the string is a
> > constant, it is possible to put the regexp in braces and eliminate one
> > additional level of backslash quoting.  Here are a few examples from
> > lib/telnet.exp. As you can see, the regexps become quite a bit
> > clearer, even for these fairly simple cases.

> That is good for lib/telnet.exp, but some files, like
> lib/dejagnu.exp and testsuite/runtests.all/libs.exp substitute
> variables into the regexps.

This is why I said "as long as the string is constant". ;-)

For strings containing varaible substitutions, I don't think there is
much we can do.

Ben

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