[Python-Dev] Deprecating whrandom; and deprecating in general (original) (raw)

Fredrik Lundh fredrik@pythonware.com
Thu, 11 Apr 2002 20:17:19 +0200

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> We can't update that code to use re because the script will have > to expose the exact same semantics as regex provides and I don't > know how to do this reliably with re (pcre or SRE).

afaik, regex and re has exactly the same semantics. it's the syntax that differs, in various intricate ways.

I'm not sure I understand. Are these other packages generating regular expressions in the regex syntax that your script then applies somewhere? This is indeed a problem -- unless you can keep your customers on Python <= 2.2 forever, eventually the regex module will die of old age.

maybe the libraries take RE patterns as input?

Perhaps what's necessary is a translation module that translates the regex syntax into re syntax?

import reconvert help(reconvert) Help on module reconvert:

NAME reconvert - Convert old ("regex") regular expressions to new syntax ("re").

(I'll comment on the rest of this discussion later, when I've rebooted my brain)