> It's probably time to give up on that terminology nit-pick.
Many Perl coders are self-taught programmers with no CS background. If a man page calls something a regular expression, that is good enough for them.
Why drop to that level if you know better?
I don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of someone who might be a decent computer scientist.
There are already ways in which I will appear ignorant due to actual ignorance; why go out of my way to dumb down the way I speak about something that I do understand?
If we are going to wreck math terminology why don't we just redefine "prime number". Let's see: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, oh ... so 9 is prime 11, is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is prime ... And, what do you know: now we can use a regular regular regex for primality testing over the binary representation: why, it's just (0|1)*1. As a bonus, we can restore 1 to its proper status as a prime number and kick out the oddball 2.
Say, if Perl called an odd test function "isprime", would you start calling odd numbers prime?
I don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of someone who might be a decent computer scientist.
Someone who is a decent computer scientist will be unlikely to care whether you say "regular expression" or "look how smart I am, I know to say that this thing Perl does is called regular expressions by ignorant plebes even though it strictly isn't, let's high-five!"
Because, y'know, someone who's actually a decent computer scientist probably has more important things to care about.
In that case, I also don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of such a lesser computer scientist who does care. :)
Maybe one thing like this doesn't matter, but if you make a habit out of sloppy use of technical terms, it will not go unnoticed.
Analogy: one neuron firing might not exceed a threshold, but thirty seven of them might.
> "look how smart I am, I know to say that this thing Perl does is called regular expressions by ignorant plebes even though it strictly isn't, let's high-five!"
That's rather verbose, making the cheesy scare quotes finger gesture an appealing alternative.
The next line is, which philosophy of meaning do you subscribe to? Ludwig Wittgenstein ("meaning is use")? Or are you an all out Humpty-Dumpty-ist ("when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, not more or less")? Or maybe Sapir-Whorf: the language not only determines its own meaning, but your entire cognitive process.
I can't tell if you're defending this line of thought or making fun of it, but the term "regular language" has a specific mathematical meaning and perverting it to include how Perl uses the term is wrong, plain and simple.
I was, in fact, slightly mocking both the argument and the related argument that people who use sloppy language like to bring out in favor of using words to mean whatever they like. I certainly agree that words with precise meanings are important to use correctly.
Many Perl coders are self-taught programmers with no CS background. If a man page calls something a regular expression, that is good enough for them.
Why drop to that level if you know better?
I don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of someone who might be a decent computer scientist.
There are already ways in which I will appear ignorant due to actual ignorance; why go out of my way to dumb down the way I speak about something that I do understand?
If we are going to wreck math terminology why don't we just redefine "prime number". Let's see: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, oh ... so 9 is prime 11, is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is prime ... And, what do you know: now we can use a regular regular regex for primality testing over the binary representation: why, it's just (0|1)*1. As a bonus, we can restore 1 to its proper status as a prime number and kick out the oddball 2.
Say, if Perl called an odd test function "isprime", would you start calling odd numbers prime?