Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
19 lines (8 loc) · 1.22 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

19 lines (8 loc) · 1.22 KB

Didi

A string matching language that is more like a programming language and less like RegEx.

What?

Currently it's just words. You can try it out in your head. Maybe someone that actually knows how to write programs can come up with an implementation.

Why?

Regular Expressions are well known for being hard to read. It might look fine for the grocery list search-and-replace stuff, but if you're doing any serious matching the fun is over. Code should be easy to read for humans. Regular Expressions are not.

One day when reading a RegEx with an alternate a|b it reminded me of if..else logic in programming languages. I wondered why RegEx are so hard to read while programming languages aren't. Why can't a string matching language be more like a programming language? It seems that string matching language hasn't seen as much progress as it's only ever been second place to a real big programming language. Didi means "little brother" in Chinese.

Thinking about it more as a programming language, more natural and readable syntax followed. Also using constructs that have proven themselves useful in programming languages but have never made their way into string matching languages like control flow constructs and variables.