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by zelphirkalt
1804 days ago
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The more I work with parsing, parser combinators and writing grammars for little languages, the less often I find myself using or wanting to use any regex at all. When I do, I always feel like there should be a better way, perhaps a type safe way of accessing the info I need and so on. It feels "Ugh, there should be a better way to do this." Especially in JavaScript, regexes blow in comparison to languages with named matching groups and all that. In JS regex really feels horrible, even more cryptic than in other languages. I think regexes are often used as a quick and dirty solution to problems, which should be solved differently. But once the regex "works" and is in place, others begin to rely on that output. Over time cruft begins to accumulate and the regex is forgotten or at least never replaced with anything more appropriate. |
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Surprise: The most common parser combinator libraries do backtracking. That's exactly the problem. Any solution as widely used (if not overused) as regular expressions ends up exposing a number of dark corners where the design isn't as clean and tight as you would want it. There are lots of better ways, but most of them are specialized and are totally unsuited for significant areas where people need something.
That said: yes I've used LR(1) parsing (not LALR) using a library that uses parser combinators with a good interface, and it's more powerful than regex and worth it for the right usecase.