Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation?

Date	2012-11-02 08:49 -0700
From	Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.javascript
Subject	Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation?
References	<50330d14-3a30-4885-9833-18c75717a04d@googlegroups.com> <XnsA0FF6988CAC95eejj99@194.109.133.133> <BMSdnRSFG8QIVA7NnZ2dnUVZ_vGdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <f7k798117mcgu610jd2i8ca98s770f9uc5@4ax.com>
Message-ID	<Ceidnfe5X9M_dg7NnZ2dnUVZ_hWdnZ2d@earthlink.com> (permalink)

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On 11/2/2012 6:58 AM, Hans-Georg Michna wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Nov 2012 06:25:08 -0700, Patricia Shanahan wrote:
>
>> If I'm prepared to look at it long enough, I can generally work out what
>> a Regex does, but Regex does not seem to me to be a very human-friendly,
>> smoothly readable language.
>
> I agree, but in my experience regular expressions are too
> frequently the best solution to string processing problems to
> ignore them.

I agree with not ignoring them, but also think there is a tendency to
over-use them, making code much more complicated, and less readable,
than it could be.

Using regular expression matching to do a simple string contains seems
to me to be an example. At a minimum, the reader has to check the probe
string for RegExp special characters.

>
> I sometimes see code that inefficiently loops through strings or
> character arrays, apparently because the programmer did not know
> regular expressions.

Or perhaps the programmer thought the case was not performance critical,
and the explicit loop code was clearer and more readable than the
regular expression equivalent.

>
> My personal advice to every JavaScript (and other) programmer is
> to learn at least the most basic parts of the regular expression
> language.

Been there, done that - in 1983 when I was learning ed, vi, grep, awk etc.

Patricia

Thread

Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? RobG <rgqld@iinet.net.au> - 2012-11-01 18:32 -0700
  Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Denis McMahon <denismfmcmahon@gmail.com> - 2012-11-02 06:14 +0000
    Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-02 02:28 -0700
  Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? "Evertjan." <exxjxw.hannivoort@inter.nl.net> - 2012-11-02 10:22 +0100
    Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2012-11-02 10:37 +0100
    Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-02 06:25 -0700
      Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Asen Bozhilov <asen.bozhilov@gmail.com> - 2012-11-02 06:35 -0700
      Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgNoEmailPlease@michna.com> - 2012-11-02 14:58 +0100
        Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-02 08:49 -0700
          Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgNoEmailPlease@michna.com> - 2012-11-04 21:52 +0100
            Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2012-11-04 22:49 +0000
              Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgNoEmailPlease@michna.com> - 2012-11-05 13:18 +0100
              Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Scott Sauyet <scott.sauyet@gmail.com> - 2012-11-06 06:48 -0800
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2012-11-06 15:04 +0000
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-11-06 10:43 -0800
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Scott Sauyet <scott.sauyet@gmail.com> - 2012-11-06 11:22 -0800
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-06 12:16 -0800
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Scott Sauyet <scott.sauyet@gmail.com> - 2012-11-06 12:53 -0800
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgNoEmailPlease@michna.com> - 2012-11-07 17:34 +0100
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2012-11-07 23:21 +0100
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? "Evertjan." <exxjxw.hannivoort@inter.nl.net> - 2012-11-07 23:23 +0100
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-11-07 17:00 -0800
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? "Evertjan." <exxjxw.hannivoort@inter.nl.net> - 2012-11-08 07:16 +0100
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Dr J R Stockton <reply1245@merlyn.demon.co.uk.invalid> - 2012-11-07 17:50 +0000
            Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Dr J R Stockton <reply1245@merlyn.demon.co.uk.invalid> - 2012-11-05 19:26 +0000
              Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Stefan Weiss <krewecherl@gmail.com> - 2012-11-07 22:13 +0100
        Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-11-02 09:51 -0700
      Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2012-11-02 18:41 +0100
        Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-02 12:30 -0700
          Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2012-11-02 20:33 +0000
            Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgNoEmailPlease@michna.com> - 2012-11-04 21:57 +0100
              Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2012-11-04 22:44 +0000
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Andrew Poulos <ap_prog@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-05 15:41 +1100
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2012-11-05 09:07 +0000
          Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2012-11-02 22:10 +0100
            Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-02 15:22 -0700
              Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2012-11-03 10:19 +0100
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-03 13:05 -0700
                Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2012-11-03 21:39 +0100
        Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2012-11-03 12:26 +0100
  Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> - 2012-11-02 12:28 +0200
    Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-11-02 10:00 -0700
  Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Asen Bozhilov <asen.bozhilov@gmail.com> - 2012-11-02 06:15 -0700
  Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Scott Sauyet <scott.sauyet@gmail.com> - 2012-11-06 06:32 -0800
    Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? RobG <rgqld@iinet.net.au> - 2012-11-06 18:23 -0800
      Re: Good use of bitwise NOT "~" or unnecessary obfuscation? Scott Sauyet <scott.sauyet@gmail.com> - 2012-11-07 11:22 -0800

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