[Israel.pm] The qr// operator

[Avishalom Shalit]

isn't qr a performance thing ?
couldn't you have gotten the same readability with strings ?

2008/12/30 Eli Billauer <eli at billauer.co.il>:
> Hello all,
>
>
> After quite a few years of using Perl, I suddenly discovered how complex
> regular expressions can be written, using the qr// operator. It does
> appear in the perlop manpage, but somehow I managed not to realize how
> useful it is.
>
>
> Have a look on the code below, which was taken from
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cache/email/
>
>
> Note that $atext contains the *compiled* regular expression, so it can
> be used within another regular expression, possibly to create another
> compiled regular expression, such as $dot_atom_text below. The variable
> doesn't contain the string which created the regular expression, nor
> some matching result, but it takes the meaning of the regular
> expression, and encapsulates it in a string.
>
>
> Now just skip to the bottom lines, and see how readable the final
> expression is.
>
>
> Remember all these patterns for "what I call a whitespace" or "this,
> this or that" which are repeated ten times in a long one-liner? I really
> wonder what they were good for.
>
>
> Which makes me wonder: Why aren't all nontrivial regular expressions
> written like this?
>
>
>    Eli
>
>
>    sub is_valid_email ($) {
>        my ($addr) = @_;
>        my $atext = qr/[A-Za-z0-9\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\_\`\{\|\+\~]/;
>        my $dot_atom_text = qr/$atext+(\.$atext+)*/;
>
>        my $no_ws_ctl_char = qr/[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]/;
>        my $qtext_char = qr/([\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7e]|$no_ws_ctl_char)/;
>        my $text = qr/[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f]/;
>        my $qtext = qr/($qtext_char|\\$text)*/;
>        my $quoted_string = qr/"$qtext"/;
>
>        my $quotedpair = qr/\\$text/;
>        my $dtext = qr/[\x21-\x5a\x5e-\x7e\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]/;
>        my $dcontent = qr/($dtext|$quotedpair)/;
>        my $domain_literal = qr/\[(${dcontent})*\]/;
>
>        if ( $addr =~ /^($dot_atom_text|$quoted_string)\@($dot_atom_text|$domain_literal)$/ ) {
>                return 1;
>        } else {
>                return 0;
>        }
>    }
>
> --
> Web: http://www.billauer.co.il
>
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-- 
-- vish