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Subject: [RT] Is a CL like wrapper for RE feasible?
From: Alex Karasulu <aok123@bellsouth.net>
To: commons-dev@jakarta.apache.org
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Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 23:11:06 -0400
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Hello,

I started looking at some code which uses both ORO and Regexp in various
places.  Most of the code is targeted for 1.4 and up so there is a
possibility for using 1.4 regular expressions as well.  Looking at the
RE landscape and at the logging landscape one quickly asks, "is there
room here for a commons-logging like wrapper but for regular expression
implementations?"

Is there a way to wrap RE implementations?  At a cursory glance I would
guess so.  It wouldn't be that difficult to abstract away the interfaces
the same way CL has for logging implementations.  

However there seems to be a very subtle distinction to the
logging-wrapper use case from what would be regex-wrapper usage.  A
logging implementation is a choice.  Meaning any implementation can be
used so long as it is supported by CL.  They all will work in the end. 
This is not necessarily the case for a RE wrapper where some
implementations may not support the same RE syntax.  So the
implementation choice is somewhat restricted when the RE syntax is
chosen.  Not every implementation is necessarily viable.

Makes me wonder ... is this the reason why there is no commons-regex?

Alex


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