Spring cleaning of the Regex board stickies?

[ragax]

Hi Regex gang!

 

Hope you all had a nice weekend.

For a few months, I have been visiting the regex board nearly daily and reading all the posts. I LOVE this board and all the stimulating activity! 

 

But, seeing the five stickies at the top of the board everyday, it seems to me that perhaps these threads are a tad outdated and not tremendously helpful. Of the five, three are locked, and only one seems fairly current and useful.

I'd like to share a few thoughts about this in order to get the convo going with the ordinary contributors (as well as with gurus, mods and admins) who also love this board, hoping that some thoughts will be exchanged and that some way down the line we'll be left with an even better board.

 

Here's my view about the five stickies. These are only opinions, and I'm sharing them "abruptly" in order to stimulate discussion. 

 

1. How to ask a regex question: for me this is the most important thread, as many new posters ask questions in plain English, without posting sample input and desired output. I'd suggest making this topic the top thread on the board, and unlocking it to allow current contributors to post a few examples of well-phrased regex questions.   

 

2. Regex Resources: It should be wonderful for us all to have a stickied Regex Resources thread... but this thread has been locked for more than five years, and effigy, who started it, hasn't been on the forum in over two years. In five years, the web has not stood still. New sites appear, some old resources disappear or become irrelevant. Take a look at the thread... For instance, is this really a good resource?

Many of the regex board's current contributors were not around at the time of the stickie. So could it be time for a new regex resources thread where all the current users can contribute?... With that in mind, today I started a Regex Resources... Reloaded thread, which links to the old thread.

 

3. Highlighting Search Terms: Of the hundreds of regex questions on the regex board, I cannot find a reason why this particular one needs to be stickied. Watching all the questions that go through the board week after week, I very much doubt that posters are more hungry for the info in that post than for the info in any other post. I'd suggest unstickying this post.

 

4. Common Expressions: Take a look. Do the two-and-a-half posts on this thread really contain useful expressions? I don't think so. And it is hugely outdated (see the use of the deprecated eregi in the first post). If this were a useful stickie, we wouldn't get questions about "how do I match an email address" every third day. I would suggest either unlocking the thread so we can all add something meaningful. Or unstickying it using the "Regex Resources" thread to add links to libraries and "common expressions".

 

(v) Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, is available: should this thread from 2006 really be the top thread on the board? I love Jeffrey's book, and it seems to me that it should be prominent in our "Regex Resources" thread... but does this old announcement need to be the first thing you see on the board??? Something about it reminds me the people who knock at your door to convert you to their religion. Jeffrey's book is fab, but, for the record, PCRE has evolved since 2006: (i) MRE3 doesn't cover everything, e.g features like \K and (?DEFINE), and (ii) the optimizations he mentions are interesting, but having benchmarked them in recent PCRE versions, do not seem to result in speed gains.   

 

In summary:

for my taste, the "cleaned up stickies" of our beloved regex board would only have two posts, until something else of great value comes along:

1. How to ask a regex question, unlocked, so the people who answer questions can post .

2. sticky a new Regex Resources thread where we can all participate, whether the new Regex Resources... Reloaded or another one.

3. I'd suggest unstickying the other three stickies and letting them fight for survival, like every other thread.

 

Things almost never happen as one initially imagines they should, so I'm not expecting these suggestions to be followed to the letter. But I thought it might be time to kick up the mud a bit to get the conversation rolling and see what everyone else thinks... Whatever the result, for the people who love this board, I am sure it will be an improvement on the current situation.

 

Wishing you all a beautiful week!

 

 

Peace,

 

ragax

 

 

[.josh]

1. How to ask a regex question: for me this is the most important thread, as many new posters ask questions in plain English, without posting sample input and desired output. I'd suggest making this topic the top thread on the board, and unlocking it to allow current contributors to post a few examples of well-phrased regex questions.   

 

We cannot really enforce sticky orders, it's not how SMF works.  Stickies are ordered same way as non-stickied:  most recent response response (last post descending), and you can reorder by clicking on column headers.  There is no way to say "no matter what, make this sticky #1".  But you make a fair enough point about adding to it, so I unlocked it.

 

2. Regex Resources: It should be wonderful for us all to have a stickied Regex Resources thread... but this thread has been locked for more than five years, and effigy, who started it, hasn't been on the forum in over two years. In five years, the web has not stood still. New sites appear, some old resources disappear or become irrelevant. Take a look at the thread... For instance, is this really a good resource?

Many of the regex board's current contributors were not around at the time of the stickie. So could it be time for a new regex resources thread where all the current users can contribute?... With that in mind, today I started a Regex Resources... Reloaded thread, which links to the old thread.

 

Regex for the most part hasn't really changed though, so even if the resources are *old*, if the links still work (not gonna lie, haven't checked), they should still be viable.  But again, you make a fair point about being able to contribute new links/tuts, so I unlocked the thread and merged your thread with it.

 

 

3. Highlighting Search Terms: Of the hundreds of regex questions on the regex board, I cannot find a reason why this particular one needs to be stickied. Watching all the questions that go through the board week after week, I very much doubt that posters are more hungry for the info in that post than for the info in any other post. I'd suggest unstickying this post.

 

My guess is it was probably a more popular topic back then and so someone decided to sticky it.  Or...someone could have been particularly proud of the solution and happened to have powers to sticky...who knows.  In any case, I will agree that it doesn't currently warrant being stickied. 

 

4. Common Expressions: Take a look. Do the two-and-a-half posts on this thread really contain useful expressions? I don't think so. And it is hugely outdated (see the use of the deprecated eregi in the first post). If this were a useful stickie, we wouldn't get questions about "how do I match an email address" every third day. I would suggest either unlocking the thread so we can all add something meaningful. Or unstickying it using the "Regex Resources" thread to add links to libraries and "common expressions".

 

Thread unlocked.

 

 

(v) Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, is available: should this thread from 2006 really be the top thread on the board? I love Jeffrey's book, and it seems to me that it should be prominent in our "Regex Resources" thread... but does this old announcement need to be the first thing you see on the board??? Something about it reminds me the people who knock at your door to convert you to their religion. Jeffrey's book is fab, but, for the record, PCRE has evolved since 2006: (i) MRE3 doesn't cover everything, e.g features like \K and (?DEFINE), and (ii) the optimizations he mentions are interesting, but having benchmarked them in recent PCRE versions, do not seem to result in speed gains.   

 

Gonna have to disagree on this one.  I think I'm going to have to dust off my copy and recheck, but I coulda swore it did in fact cover \K...and pretty much everything under the sun.  Sure, there have been *some* changes to regex since 2006, but truth is, despite its age, this book remains king of "learn absolutely everything you ever wanted to know about regex".  I challenge you to find a more thorough, more recent, etc.. book.  Even for the changes that have been made since then...they aren't for beginners or even intermediates anyways.  But I will agree it doesn't deserve a separate sticky from a "resources" thread, so I unstickied it.

 

 

[ragax]

Hi .josh,

 

I love what you've done. It really does feel like a Spring cleaning. (Even though it's Autumn here in New Zealand).

Thanks for explaining about SMF. I should know, I have two SMF forums on obscure topics---they get about one post a year. On good years.

Really nice to see such a cool forum as phpfreaks running on SMF, actually.

 

I challenge you to find a more thorough, more recent, etc.. book.

 

Err... I decline the challenge. (Is that allowed? )

You're totally right, there isn't one.

 

Thank you for making the regex board even more awesome.

 

Wishing you a beautiful day,

 

ragax