[fpc-pascal] CSV via PCRE

[Jeff Wormsley]

S. Fisher wrote:

> Regular expressions are used by vi and emacs; in fact, any editor that
> doesn't let you do a regex search is a joke.  (Even some microsoft
> applications understand regexes.)  So everyone who programs should
> learn regular expressions.
> 
> Regular expressions are also used by grep, and by the languages awk,
> Ruby, Perl, etc.  Every programmer should know how to use at least
> one of these languages.  Those who don't should perhaps be lumped
> together with COBOL programmers.
> 
> Therefore, I honestly believe that anyone who doesn't understand
> regular expressions has a huge, glaring, inexcusable hole in his
> computer knowledge.  Ignorance of regular expressions is like not
> knowing how to tie one's shoelaces: it's not something to boast about.

I have been programming professionally for 18 years, in roughly 10 
different languages, including assembler.  I have never once written a 
program with vi or emacs, nor have I ever programmed in awk, Ruby or 
Perl.  Or COBOL, for that matter.  Does that make me somehow unprofessional?

 > '\G\s*"([^"]*(?:""[^"]*)*)"\s*,|\G([^,"]*),'

Claiming a line of gibberish like that given above is either readable or 
maintainable is the real joke.  Adding all the pages of code to parse 
gibberish like that above, to be able to handle 40,000 different 
possible text formats, when all you need is to handle simple CSV files, 
is also a joke.

Jeff.
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