Re: [dev] another text user interface for sam

From: Connor Lane Smith <cls_AT_lubutu.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 16:22:00 +0000

On 2 March 2016 at 16:06, Greg Reagle <greg.reagle_AT_umbc.edu> wrote:
> Well sam has ISRE, but it lacks a nano/vi/emacs-like (full screen interactive) TUI.

I think the key to *interactive* structural regular expressions is
that it must be possible to position oneself 'within' an expression.
Suppose you write x/re/, then sam will simply print all of the
matching substrings, just as though you'd written x/re/p. So dot does
not reflect the fact that if you added further commands then they
would be performed on each of those matches. In order to be
interactive, it must be possible to write the command interactively,
rather than composing the whole expression in one go and sending it to
the editor to evaluate. That's why multiple cursors are crucial: they
allow you to collect all the matches, then to decide how to *interact*
with them. So I don't agree that sam's structural regular expressions
are interactive in that sense. That's my main complaint.

cls
Received on Wed Mar 02 2016 - 17:22:00 CET