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what debugging regex feels like (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] frezik@midwest.social 31 points 1 week ago

It helps if you break it apart into its component parts. Which is like anything else, really, but we've all accepted that regexes are supposed to run together in an unreadable mess. No reason it has to be that way.

[-] marcos@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

If they are Perl regexes, like all regexes are supposed to be, you can have non-semantic whitespace and comments.

But if you are using some system that enforces something different, you are out of luck.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 6 points 1 week ago

Not necessarily. For just debugging purposes, you can still break them up to help understand them. Even ignoring that, there are options in languages that don't implement /x.

https://wumpus-cave.net/post/2022/06/2022-06-06-how-to-write-regexes-that-are-almost-readable/index.html

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago

At my company we store our regex in the database with linebreaks in it, but when it's actually called to be used those line breaks are stripped out. That way regex that looks for X can all be all on one line and actually readable.