<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/7/8 James Le Cuirot <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:chewi@aura-online.co.uk">chewi@aura-online.co.uk</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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But what would I use it for? I'm not sure...<br>
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James</font></blockquote><div><br>Anything. If you use SQL then you're using a functional language - describing what you want from the database and letting the engine decide the best way to carry out the task. Same goes for a regular expression, you describe the string you're looking for and then let the engine work out the best way. (You can give hints, of course :) The other way would be to do what an old colleague of mine did, who didn't like regex. He built a string parsing module, and it parsed to his procedure. Not very flexible or reusable, the logic not very abstracted, and probably not very fast.<br>
<br>Like the old adage, you can tell me what to do or how to do it, just not both. I prefer the first. Some are more comfortable with the second.<br><br>Iain <br></div></div><br>