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LPT: ChatGPT is incredible for generating and evaluating regex
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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Programming
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I have yet to see a regex that is so complicated that I would need some help. I expect programmers to know how to use regexes but it seems that it's not the case. And when it becomes too big, you always can write verbose regexes with comments, it's even easier. If someone could show me something too difficult for a human being (excluding the regex to validate emails), I'm interested.
It's not that I'm incapable of evaluating regex, but rather the mental burden of evaluating complex regex statements and determining their purpose can be time-consuming. Why take 20 minutes to understand some regex when ChatGPT can do it in 20 seconds?
A coworker once defined regex as a write-only language and he definitely had a point. I love regex but it can be time consuming figuring out exactly what a complex regex expression is doing.
Regex isn't difficult, just annoying to ensure it is bug-free. If ChatGPT can help, then I don't know why you wouldn't be in favor of it
It's often developers who never took a finite automata class who I've seen struggle with regular expressions.
It's kind of like writing code in C while not understanding how memory management works
Huh. That class looked hard as hell, I didn't take it, and now I'm 2 years out of school still googling regex every time I need it.
Maybe I should do some reading ๐
It was mandatory. I'm glad I took it, but I'm glad it's over ๐๐๐
Just look up how finite automatas work. You don't need to understand turing machines or turing completeness