Comics

453 readers

1 users here now

A community for sharing comics related to programming

Icon base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 10 months ago

MODERATORS

LinearArray

315

[xkcd] Regular Expressions (10 Jan 2007) (programming.dev)

submitted 9 months ago by mac to c/comics

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

source under CC BY-NC 2.5 Deed
explainxkcd/208

Hover Text:

Wait, forgot to escape a space. Wheeeeee[taptaptap]eeeeee!

Transcript

[in a yellow box:]
Whenever I learn a new skill I concoct elaborate fantasy scenarios where it lets me save the day.

Megan: Oh no! The killer must have followed her on vacation!
[Megan points to computer.]
Megan: But to find them we'd have to search through 200 MB of emails looking for something formatted like an address!
Cueball: It's hopeless!

Off-panel voice: Everybody stand back.

Off-panel voice: I know regular expressions.

[A man swings in on a rope, toward the computer.]

tap tap
The word PERL! appears in a bubble.

[The man swings away, and the other characters cheer.]

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] BetterDev 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Regex is fast and useful though. It's a tool in your toolbox that make certain situations extremely easy as the comic depicts.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sure. I'm just saying it was never worth the effort to learn it for me.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

I guess I'm just not sure what your doing in Python that is equivalent in some way to regex without using the re library. Like, do you mean you're using looped ifs and raw strings to do something similar?