Re: Regexps and strings once again

[Yuri Khan]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 6:27 AM, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden> wrote:

> I wrote the function as taking a regexp.  And I find what I'm doing
> wrong 90% of the time when using it is that I expect an exact match, but
> instead I'm getting all matching nodes.

> 1) New Special Syntax
> (dom-by-id dom #/I (can)?haz new syntax/)

> 2) Cheat; i.e., introduce a convention
> (dom-by-id dom (regexp "I \\(couldn't\\)?haz new syntax"))

3) Adopt a convention that matches are literal by default; for regexp
matching, start and end the pattern with a slash.

(dom-by-id dom "/Some *regex+/"))
(dom-by-id dom "Some* literal|string")

4) Mark literal patterns: have a function that turns a string into a
regex, by quoting every metacharacter.

(dom-by-id dom "Some *regex+"))
(dom-by-id dom (literal "Some* literal|string"))

5) Allow the pattern to be an array or list of literal strings. For a
single literal string, use a singleton array/list.

(dom-by-id dom "Some *regex+"))
(dom-by-id dom ["Some* literal|string"])
(dom-by-id dom '("Some* literal|string"))