Re: [Gnumed-devel] External id type attributes, data consistency and validation

[Jim Busser]

On 2011-09-25, at 2:56 PM, Karsten Hilbert wrote:

>> I gather
>> 
>>      .regexen
>> 
>> is an inventive plural for pseudo-latin regex
> 
> Geek speak: boxen, UNIXen, VAXen
> 
>       http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/overgeneralization.html

Well, yes, but the final lines of the above endeth

        It is done not to impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of 
clarity.

and so

        .regexen

however amusing conversationally in an email, risks to be unclear in a column 
definition. Clearer would be

        .satisfies_regex

or something of that sort. Unless in your view

        .regex

can be sufficiently well-understood to mean that -- when non null -- values 
associated with this external_id_type must satisfy the regex

>> and would need to clarify how multiple strings would need to be formatted / 
>> stored to best allow their re-use.
> 
> We would not because it would be an array of TEXT.

So the python which processes the candidate value would do something like

        for each element of array when the array is not null

                evaluate the value against the regex

                        if satisfies --> continue
                        else
                                prepare feedback
                                loop with condition
                        fi

?

-- Jim