Regular Expressions in Ruby and Python

A personal foible perhaps but I do find Ruby’s regular expression syntax remains in my brain much more easily than the Python equivalent.

Maybe it’s the Ruby inheritance from Perl that makes the difference. For simple scripts I can just write standard regexps without any recourse to documentation and they just work! For example:

some_var = "prefix interesting_match some suffix"
if some_var =~ /prefix (\w+) some suffix/
  interesting_bit = $1
  print "Match found: ", interesting_bit, "\n"
end

In order to do the same in Python I find myself faffing around with the documentation (using ActiveState Python it’s great to have a proper help file, but I would really like more links between the class reference and real examples of usage to help me out) and trying to remember if I want re.search or re.match and how do I get a match group and use it, etc. I have sundry Python scripts floating around that I open up and copy relevant examples from, but it does rather take time.

import re
some_var = "prefix interesting_match some suffix"
pat = re.compile('prefix (\w+) some suffix')
m = pat.match(some_var)
if m:
    print 'Match found: ', m.groups(0)[0]

Now I have to admit that it’s not a huge deal in terms of the resulting code, but it took me 5-10 minutes just now to code and debug the Python version as opposed to the Ruby version which I typed in and which worked first time.

The net result is that I am noticeably  more productive in Ruby for those little scripts that make life easier, or when I am under strict time pressure. Now this is not to say that I don’t like Python, or indeed that when I have a little more time I don’t get use it and enjoy it. Having done some reasonably significant work in Python, e.g. rework P4DTI for PVCS (now Serena) Tracker I feel reasonably qualified to comment.

I also took the time to get sufficiently proficient in Python extensions to enhance and maintain P4Python. Mind you I now feel somewhat humbled by the most recent efforts at a Perforce integration (PyPerforce) – shows a depth of Python extensions knowledge before which I can only bow in admiration! (Minor aside – Ruby extensions are much easier to write than Python ones due mainly to the different garbage collection models).

Finishing up, I am definitely Perl-averse these days. There are a few Perl scripts that I maintain and can’t be bothered, or can’t find a convincing “business” case to rewrite, but anything new is Ruby or Python.