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Postings from August 2010
On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:51:50PM +0100, hv@crypt.org wrote: > Zefram <zefram@fysh.org> wrote: [Thanks for listing the possible characters] > :For our present purpose, I'd be happy with any of > : > : _ ^ ~ * . > > FWIW, I like ^, I'd be happy with ~ or *, I dislike . and _. > > I quite like the mnemonic sense of ^ as "starting with a clean sheet", or > "anchoring [the flags] to a known set", though I wouldn't suggest trying > to mention or explain that in the documentation. Or "from the top", and the top of the page is above instructions about change-this-from-the-default. > I find all of ^ ~ * to be sufficiently visually distinctive (at least in > any font I'm used to using). I don't find any mnemonic argument for or > against ~. I find the quantifier sense of * slightly distracting, in that > it seems to contradict any mnemonic sense for its use in this context. > > I dislike . because I don't find it sufficiently visually distinctive, > and because it's "any" sense seems to contradict any mnemonic sense for > its use in this context. > > I dislike _ because it is a word character, and because it is not > distinctive enough from -. I realise that this is a bit of a bikeshed issue, but I agree with Hugo, pretty much for the reasons that he gives. I don't find ^ *that* confusing 1: it already has a second meaning, inside character classes 2: I already look with suspicion at any ^ used at any position other than the start of a regexp, as things like /(^beer|pie)/ don't do what some people expected Nicholas ClarkThread Previous | Thread Next