Re: how to use parsing expressing grammar

[Helmut Eller]

* Xah Lee [2009-03-03 23:05+0100] writes:

> Please make your PEG in emacs with a regex-like API. Something any
> emacs user familiar with regex will be able to use brainlessly. This
> will be huge...

Emacs's regexp API is stateful which isn't always great.  match-string
and friends refer to the last match which makes save-match-data
necessary and is hardly elegant.  It's also very easy to forget
save-match-data in timers, process-filters, etc.  I clearly prefer APIs
which minimize global side-effects.

The regexp approach to specify submatches "counting parens" is also hard
to use because those indices need to be adjusted when the regexp
changes.  Parens in regexps are used for two purposes: to override
precedence and to specify submatches.  This double function is IMO
confusing and rarely useful.

No, the Emacs regexp API is not the best example to imitate.  

> Also, Mike & Helmut, please consider putting your code in goode code.
> Google Code is very popular, probably today the most popular code
> building service, and extremely easy to use, and from my studies
> Google's products and services are all extremely high quality. It
> would help a lot in your software at least in the marketing aspect if
> you use Google Code. Also, open a google group is very useful and
> popular. (yasnippet is a successful example for a emacs project on
> google code. There are several others, including e.g. js2, ejacs, the
> erlang one, etc.) Going into Savana or anything on FSF services tend
> to be a dead end. (yeah, controversy, but whatever.)

Like it or not, Emacs is an FSF project and anything that wants to have
some influence in the Emacs world better follows FSF standards.

Google doesn't offer mailing lists, only web interfaces.  AFAIK, it's
not possible to read Google Groups from within Emacs which rules it out
for me.

Helmut.