[fpc-pascal] My favourite missing feature

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:
> > Maybe. I never used them (except a text editor of course). Everything 
> > you can do with these tools is also possible with a good Pascal compiler 
> > (and much more).
> 
> Very true, I'd not deny that for a moment. However what's better: a 
> single regex expressing a pattern to underlying well-tested code or ten 
> lines of "classic" Pascal doing the same job? Cryptic though regular 
> expressions are I'd suggest that the latter case has far more scope for 
> coding error or for misinterpretation by a maintainer.

I don't see that. Worse, even if there was something to it, I don't see how
one you can assume to make less mistakes in a second language you don't use
everyday than in the language that you do use everyday.

The pinnacle of Regex madness seems to be compiled regex. The syntax is so
terse because it had to be interpreted. "compiler regex" as in the Ruby
example with comments is pretty much an oxymoron.