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Cerberus
Cerberus
12:01 AM
@Xanne I'm trying to find the video where I heard this.
Maybe I'm confusing people/reviews.
 
Xanne
Xanne
@Cerberus Someone got lessons on “which” and “that” without having any real sense for the language.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Should be Your party will burn food and hope, two incredibly important resources without which you will have your followers dropping like flies.
@Cerberus: Is that from a video game of some kind?
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@Xanne I don't know, it sounded like his own invention.
Like...a shortcut.
@Robusto From a review of a video game.
Here it is.
Video starts a few seconds before the construction in question.
@Robusto Yes.
 
Robusto
Robusto
12:19 AM
Yeah. I listened to it, and while it does give one pause when read, his vocal intonations make it work, sort of.
My inner schoolmarm winces, but I override her.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Yeah, or at least it kind if sounds like it came spontaneously to him.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Yeah. Like he got to a knot in his grammar and just surfed over it.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
But maybe he is reading from a written text, who knows.
@Robusto Yes; because that...without is not possible in this sentence, he would have had to switch to without which, which may have sounded too 'formal' to him?
> ?that you will have your followers dropping like flies without
 
Robusto
Robusto
Now how if he had rendered it this way: "Your party will burn food and hope, two incredibly important resources that you will have your followers dropping like flies without."
Ha, we came to the same idea at the same time.
Jinx
That was probably what he was going for and decided he could move the preposition up to the head of the clause.
Not "decided" as in deliberated, but it just felt possible.
 
Xanne
Xanne
“Surfing over” sounds like the right explanation to me.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
12:30 AM
@Robusto Right, and I can understand if he found this construction too cumbersome.
 
Xanne
Xanne
12:55 AM
I listened; clearly American; intentful; big pause (comma) after without. It makes sense when you hear it. Without has the object “important resources.”
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@Xanne Odd but probably not contrived, right?
 
Xanne
Xanne
Right. Just moving phrases and leaving stuff out.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
1:13 AM
Right.
 
Robusto
Robusto
1:35 AM
@tchrist: Raining here pretty hard now, after lots of wind. Supposed to last here for a couple days. We'll see.
 
 
2 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
3:40 AM
Here, it's Golden Autumn. Warm and sunny. Lots of yellow leaves.
This is the cathedral built on the spot where Nicholas II and his family were murdered in 1918
Execution of the Romanov family
The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot and bayoneted to death by Communist revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also killed that night were retainers who had accompanied them: notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov. The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped and mutilated.In 1919 the White Army commissioned an investigation but were unable to find the unmarke...
No, Sir, No
"No, Sir, No" (Roud 146) is an English folk song describing a courtship. It has been collected from traditional singers in England and the USA, and in a bowdlerised version was taught to English schoolchildren in music lessons in the 1950s. Alternative titles include "No, Sir", "No, John, No", "O No John", "Yes Or No", "Cruel Father", "Ripest Apples", "Twenty Eighteen", "The Spanish Merchant's Daughter", "The Spanish Captain", "Spanish Lady", "Yonder Sits a Spanish Lady", "Yonder Sits a Pretty Creature", and "In Yonder Grove". == Synopsis == A young woman (or a Spanish lady) is walking a garden...
A nice song by Jean Ritchie I heard several days ago
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
4:55 AM
I wonder how common polygamy is in Iran
Because it looks like a modern country
 
 
1 hour later…
Færd
Færd
6:06 AM
@M.A.R. as a lay enthusiast, yes; as a scholar, unfortunately not.
BTW there's this podcast, فردوسی خوانی, that you might like.
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
I don't like to keep home.
I feel home annoying if nobody keeps it for me.
I prefer to stay in nature or public places.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
7:15 AM
@Cerberus How does one "burn" hope? It's not a fuel, or even combustible.
Poor Assange. I feel for him.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
7:37 AM
@CowperKettle very rare and culturally shunned.
Just spitballing here, but around 600 AD when Islam came to be Arabs were so sexist they allegedly buried their daughters because of the shame of having one. I wouldn't be surprised if polygamy back then was a way for a few people to save many widows whose husbands died in war
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
8:37 AM
@M.A.R. I thought Islam was circa 700 AD.
@M.A.R. Are you Iran too? I forget.
No, 600+ AD is correct. My bad.
@M.A.R. Islam is still institutionally very sexist. C.f. that one third share thing. Not sure what the technical term for it is.
One third share for women, that is.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
8:57 AM
@FaheemMitha I wasn't referring to Islam, but the dominant cultural influences of that time. I'm not well-versed in Sharia law to be able to justify, defend or condemn their laws.
@FaheemMitha aye
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
9:23 AM
@Cerberus it's weird under a microscope, but I think it's used in normal conversation. eg 1, eg 2, eg 3
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
9:45 AM
Hunger trouble
The food makers are really poor at making instant noodles - they never make me feel full
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Try out buckwheat kasha, it will make you feel full. Add some cottage cheese and a tablespoon of olive oil.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
10:07 AM
Today the first doses of the Russian covid vaccine were injected to Phase III volunteers.
 
Gigili
Gigili
I have lots of great personality traits...
or “symptoms” as my doctor calls them.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
)))))
> Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University.
> The U.S. section of the study enrolled a predominantly Christian group of 199 participants from Washington, D.C. The Afghanistan section of the study enrolled a group of 149 Muslim participants in Kabul.
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
10:36 AM
So hot
I would prefer to be solved hunger first every day
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
10:49 AM
> "This is not a study about whether God exists, this is a study about why and how brains come to believe in gods. Our hypothesis is that people whose brains are good at subconsciously discerning patterns in their environment may ascribe those patterns to the hand of a higher power," he adds.
This is disingenuous. Because atheists precisely use this "it's your instinct, you can't help it" to diss religious arguments.
Lemme read further
P.S. shouldn't be a control group or something?
Did they perform a study on people known to be religious and when they told patterns apart, discovered "religious people see patterns a lot"? That sounds extremely unscientific.
@M.A.R. dropped a "there"
The link to the study seems to be broken. Gives me DOI not found.
 
Faded Giant
Faded Giant
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
11:19 AM
@M.A.R. That's because God does not want you to read this study
For if a study causes you to sin, pluck it out.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
11:39 AM
@M.A.R. Ok.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
I still have a compact cassette with my favorite Ella songs compiled, from 1997
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
12:45 PM
@CowperKettle I'm being serious. Objectivity is important if religious beliefs are under scrutiny, but not if it's atheistic? I believe discoverable truth would not bias itself towards what we do or do not believe in.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@FadedGiant Thanks
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@M.A.R. I'm not competent enough to really judge studies. I haven't read a signel book about proper study design.
So I just read the interesting parts and always keep in mind that the study may turn out wrongly done.
Right now I'm trying to understand how to translate the FEAST (focal treatment) into Russian. The term.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@CowperKettle I'm not either probably, maybe in a few years. But observing something in individuals with a preselected trait X and then saying they have it more than self-proclaimed individuals that aren't X seems like a pretty glaring leap of logic, and that's what I understood from the newspiece
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@M.A.R. Probably yes! A lot of studies are poorly designed, I guess, which makes one admire the energy of their authors, who enroll dozens of people and spend so much time.
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:00 PM
@M.A.R. science news doesn't always give all the info from an article - the news in not expected to give the full experimental design. From what you've said (I don't even know what article you're talking about, it seems like there was one population and two features were extracted, 1) amount of pattern found in nature and 2) religiosity. And presumably there was a correlation. A control is needed when you do an intervention, but not for correlation of features.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@Robusto The snow has started up again. We seem to have gotten maybe 6-8" depending on where you look. But it has caused an incredible amount of tree damage, worse than I've ever seen here before. Of course the trees were still fully leafed out, and hadn't even begun to change color.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@tchrist That's crazy. We had several periods of extremely heavy rain, loud enough to wake me up. Had it been snow it would have been record-breaking I'm sure.
 
tchrist
tchrist
This certainly is so. Yesterday was the Denver's earliest freeze ever. And Saturday they got 101, also a record.
My own number here was only 100, small solace that.
As I mentioned, Monday was our 73rd day over 90. Then Tuesday it froze.
The swarms of desperate hummingbirds are stirring.
The huddled masses yearning to drink free.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Poor things. I don't know how they manage.
 
tchrist
tchrist
They gear down their metabolisms at night.
But they're endotherms, of course.
 
Robusto
Robusto
1:09 PM
@FaheemMitha That is a metaphor. "Burn" simply means "use" in that context.
 
tchrist
tchrist
It was a full house here, with all seats taken, well past dark.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@tchrist They burn up the calories very quickly.
 
tchrist
tchrist
That's why they were sitting still and doing nothing but guzzle at nightfall. To survive the wintry night.
 
Robusto
Robusto
You have feeders out?
 
tchrist
tchrist
Of course!!!!
 
Robusto
Robusto
1:11 PM
Good job.
 
tchrist
tchrist
I put five fresh ones out on Monday, knowing this would come.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Where do you get the feeders? I might consider doing that.
 
tchrist
tchrist
And I brought them in overnight so they didn't freeze. Yesterday I kept pouring hot water on them.
Home Depot.
You can get them anywhere, really. Even Target has them.
 
Robusto
Robusto
I used to put out tallow feeders in MA for the seed-eating birds.
 
tchrist
tchrist
I have suit and seed out as well. If they can get to it. Only the ones hanging under the apple tree are snow-free right now. And the apple tree's boughs are bent to the ground all around it.
 
Robusto
Robusto
1:13 PM
I'd worry that my cats would get after the birds, though.
 
tchrist
tchrist
You should.
The suet feeders attract mostly birds that never come to the ground.
Woodpeckers, nuthatches, bushtits.
The hummingbird feeders you need to hang at your own eye-level so that cats can't seize them.
But seed is harder. I put it out in abundance Monday because of the terrible tidings.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Yeah, but when my trees are in bloom Bosco climbs up after them. I had to put metal sheathing around the trunk so he couldn't do that. He is very ingenious in the pursuit of murder and destruction.
Shadow is unwilling to go to such lengths.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Yes, Lorin the crazy redhead still goes chasing them up into trees, getting himself in need of rescue at times. Randy the shadowy tabby knows better.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Robusto Are you sure it means "use"? "lose" seems more likely, especially given the context. Do you have a cite?
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Lorin?
A pet animal?
Ah, a cat
 
Robusto
Robusto
1:18 PM
@FaheemMitha I cite my own excellent grasp of English. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.
I especially recognize a metaphor when I see one.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha He's right.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@tchrist Bosco always has to climb to the highest vantage point in any room. We have 10-foot ceilings and somehow he still managed to climb to the top of the kitchen cabinets.
 
tchrist
tchrist
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Wow, 3 meter ceilings, it's good
 
Robusto
Robusto
Lots of headroom. ^_^
@tchrist That's Lorin?
 
tchrist
tchrist
1:21 PM
@Robusto Yes.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
In Russia, a ceiling height of over 3 meters is considered a sign of a luxury apartment. The usual height is 2.5-2.7 m
@tchrist Very well-groomed!
 
Robusto
Robusto
Oh, right, you let your cats out. We have an enclosed back yard with cat fencing overhangs so they can't escape.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Robusto Congratulations on your excellent grasp of English.
@Robusto @tchrist A cite would be much appreciated.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@FaheemMitha You can't really find citations for every metaphor that comes along.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@CowperKettle 7 feet is more normal here, although 8 is not unheard of. But most of my house has vaulted cathedral ceilings so they are twice that.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
1:23 PM
@Robusto That's a shame.
 
Robusto
Robusto
> a. To use as a fuel: a furnace that burns coal.
There you go. You can try a dictionary first, you know.
> b. To metabolize (glucose, for example) in the body.
And no need to be snarky. I'm trying to help you here.
 
tchrist
tchrist
But hope can also burn low in your heart, its unsteady flame flickering and faltering, threatening to go out like a candle in the wind.
 
Robusto
Robusto
An extended metaphor.
 
tchrist
tchrist
That's his cohort in crime.
Those were shot in August 2014 when they'd both just turned one.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Our cats are a year older.
 
tchrist
tchrist
1:29 PM
> My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee,
> There in the ruins of a shattered heart
Aflame delivers hope
Burning against all odds
And illuminating what remains
What is untouched in the devastation
Hope burns
Inside all of us.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each flow'ret of its gem -and dies;
A cobweb, hiding disappointment's thorn,
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise.
 
tchrist
tchrist
> For many, political ideals remain, and hope burns to become part of the
changes of the homeland. Despite this orientation toward the past, one of
the most important survival strategies for people with painful experiences
is to start a new life as soon as they enter the new country. The hope of
starting a new life and having new changes is important in order to develop
a meaningful life in exile.
> As the year 2000 draws near, the entire globe waits in anticipation of a
new century with the hope that the destruction and social devastation of
the old will be addressed and eradicated. Even as that hope burns bright,
regional and regional and intranational conflicts abound, amassing waves of
small wars and civil strife that are unrestrained even when international
intervention occurs.
A person who burns (up) his hope and hope itself burning of course are different.
The transitive use employs hope as the object; the intransitive as the subject.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Robusto a) I wasn't being "snarky". b) I'm familiar with those usages of "hope".
 
Robusto
Robusto
@FaheemMitha My cites were about burn, not hope.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha I have something wondrous to show you. 
mac(tchrist)% echo "wibble someword someword-something el'se wibble" | perl -nle 'print for /\b{wb}(\S+)\b{wb}/g'
wibble
someword
someword-something
el'se
wibble
Perl supports \b boundaries that are qualified by which variety you want.
 
Robusto
Robusto
1:44 PM
@tchrist: Some of the hummingbird feeders I'm seeing online have perches. Hummingbirds don't really use those, though, do they?
 
tchrist
tchrist
@Robusto They do.
I'll show you which one I have. 
\b{wb} This matches a Unicode "Word Boundary", but tailored to Perl
       expectations.  This gives better (though not perfect)
       results for natural language processing than plain "\b"
       (without braces) does.  For example, it understands that
       apostrophes can be in the middle of words and that
       parentheses aren't (see the examples below).  More details
       are at <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@FaheemMitha 'burning hope' is an unlikely metaphor to me too, but that is what the author is doing, trying to treat hope like a resource that gets consumed, especially since it is going along with 'food'. I find it a little weird, but it's still what the author is doing.
 
tchrist
tchrist
 
Mitch
Mitch
I find it really annoying when dictionaries do put in metaphorical uses as actual distinct definition entries.
I mean yeah that's how one way of semantic drift happens... you use a word metaphorically and eventually it becomes the primary meaning of the word.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@tchrist Do they actually perch? When they feed at our blooms I never see them alight.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:48 PM
like how you just used "find"
 
Mitch
Mitch
but it's like dictionaries are jumping the gun by putting in metaphorical uses.
they need to wait a bit. Wait til it's a dead metaphor.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha See perldoc.perl.org/perlrebackslash.html#Assertions for details about the differerent kinds of boundaries. Unicode supports many kinds of "breaks", including grapheme cluster breaks \b{gcb}, word breaks \b{wb}, line breaks \b{lb}, and sentence breaks \b{sb}. Of course those all have corresponding inverse assertions like \B{wb} to match only where there is no would boundary.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@MattE.Эллен or 'dead metaphor'. or 'jumping the gun' (which is itself a metaphor, or at least a figurative usage of 'jump')
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@CowperKettle Apparently a fan of English nature poetry.
 
Mitch
Mitch
or 'literally' for 'intensively'
 
tchrist
tchrist
1:50 PM
@Robusto Yes, when they aren't in a hurry or are conserving energy like today in the snowstorm.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Mitch buried under 6 feet of usage statistics
 
tchrist
tchrist
And Unicode's word-breaking is far superior to the bare \b which is for program identifiers not natural-language words.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@MattE.Эллен I see what you did there.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@MattE.Эллен you're burning all my hope for OED to prime the pump
 
Robusto
Robusto
@Mitch Now you're looking in the Dictionary of Mixed Metaphors.
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:53 PM
'mixed metaphor' is both a dead metaphor and a mixed metaphor.
 
tchrist
tchrist
mac(tchrist)% echo "’Twibble “someword” someword—something el’se wibble" | perl -CS -nle 'print for /\b{wb}(\S+)\b{wb}/g'
’Twibble
“someword”
someword—something
el’se
wibble
Where that string is really "\N{RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK}Twibble \N{LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK}someword\N{RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK} someword\N{EM DASH}something el\N{RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK}se wibble"
 
Mitch
Mitch
because metaphor is a metaphor for 'carrying across' and 'mixing' is mixing carrying and mixing.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist That's a bit over my head, but do you mean the {wb} thing?
 
tchrist
tchrist
Yes.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Mitch Languages are weird.
 
tchrist
tchrist
1:57 PM
So like the the right single quotation mark has character properties Word_Break=MidNumLet and Sentence_Break=Close and Line_Break=Quotation.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist So that's a customization thingy, like I asked about in the question?
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
0
Q: What is a single word for mouth, eyes, ears and nose?

DanielThese are essentially all the organs which are attached to a creature’s head. The closest phrase I’ve come across are head sensory organs, however I was hoping there was a more formal and scientific single word to describe these.

single-word-requests
Isn't it just "head".
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
Which got downvoted by the way. 3 downvotes. I'm not feeling the love.
It's cold and bleak out there, in downvoteland.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha It's not an arbitrary customization one, but it does let you tailor which of the four Unicode boundaries you mean.
 
Robusto
Robusto
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
1:59 PM
@tchrist That's handy, certainly. But I guess I can't use that with grep.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@RegDwigнt not the hypermere (not the collection of the parts) but the hypernym (the common feature)
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
Can you point me to online documentation?
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@FaheemMitha Downvotes mean nothing. Especially not in Downvoteland. It's just a number. Of which in Downvoteland you'll see a million on every street corner.
You want a warm fuzzy number, how about 93¼.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha For what?
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist The feature you were talking about.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:00 PM
I already did.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@RegDwigнt It's better than Zombieland, I suppose.
 
tchrist
tchrist
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@RegDwigнt Thanks. I appreciate the warm and fuzzy.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Remember that grep pattern filename can be written perl -ne 'print if /pattern/' filename.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@Mitch the common feature of all head is head.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
2:01 PM
@tchrist Sorry. I wasn't keeping up with the conversation very well.
Also, I don't know Perl at all. I don't know if that was clear. Or regexes, really.
OTOH, you've literally written the book on Perl, if I got it right.
 
tchrist
tchrist
The thing is, with the zero-width look{ahead,behind}s you can create arbitrary boundary assertions of your very own.
@FaheemMitha Yes. Several.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Yes, I see. But I don't remember, since I never knew it.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@Robusto uploaded on Christmas Eve, no less.
 
Robusto
Robusto
Indeed.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Is PEG a better approach to this sort of stuff?
I don't know that either.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:04 PM
So word(?=&)(?!&&) matches that word only when it is followed by an ampersand but not when it is followed by a double ampersand.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Mitch ah, so "head holes", as all esteemed medical professors call them
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha Perl's regexes are the cream of the crop.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
I wonder if Python can do such things.
@tchrist Yes, I see that.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@MattE.Эллен You're just afraid of that oto word.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
PCRE, right?
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
2:04 PM
@MattE.Эллен yes, our esteemed professor Robusto has informed us thusly. And he's yet to be wrong even once.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha Yes, that's the C library.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@RegDwigнt lol, yeah :D
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Ok.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@MattE.Эллен Military people have other names: pie hole, snot hole, etc.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
Plot hole.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:06 PM
an ENT doc = an otolaryngologist
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@tchrist oh! now I get it :D
 
tchrist
tchrist
Or a tree clipper.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
Though technically PEG isn't a regex, is it? Not sure what it is. Something else.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
The march of the ent clipping ents?
 
Robusto
Robusto
I think we need to synthesize this conversation into a way to combine grep and metaphor. Preferably one word.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:08 PM
@FaheemMitha Nothing that supports patterns with backreferences can be solved using an NFA or DFA.
 
Robusto
Robusto
"Is there a single word for combining regular expressions and metaphorical language?"
 
tchrist
tchrist
So your original post was not a regular expression in the little-used ivory-tower sense.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@Robusto yes, grophor it.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist I don't really know what those are, sorry.
 
Robusto
Robusto
@RegDwigнt I was thinking more like getaphor.
Or gretaphor.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:10 PM
Nondeterministic finite automaton
In automata theory, a finite-state machine is called a deterministic finite automaton (DFA), if each of its transitions is uniquely determined by its source state and input symbol, and reading an input symbol is required for each state transition.A nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA), or nondeterministic finite-state machine, does not need to obey these restrictions. In particular, every DFA is also an NFA. Sometimes the term NFA is used in a narrower sense, referring to an NFA that is not a DFA, but not in this article. Using the subset construction algorithm, each NFA can be translated to...
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@Robusto no thanks Ms Garbo.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Well, in the context. Is PEG a NFA or a DFA?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@FaheemMitha another way of writing original flavour regex
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@MattE.Эллен come to where the flavour is.
 
tchrist
tchrist
That's because backreferences require that auxiliary memory proportionate to the input size be available for each one used. An NFA/DFA never does so.
NFA/DFAs can be solved in time proportional to the length of the regex. Only. You don't need to go super-exponential in the technical sense of that term.
@FaheemMitha You should please read this.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
2:14 PM
@tchrist I'm not clear what is a NFA/DFA here. We have traditional regexes, PCRE, and PEG.
@tchrist Ok.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@tchrist the two graphs bother me a great deal. Whose idea was it to scale them that way.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@RegDwigнt Russ's.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
Well I better have a word with him, then.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Linear/log graphs always make the other one look dumb.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
Oh dear. That looks like an exponential blowup.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:15 PM
Yes. All the common recursive backtracking engines are subject to it.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@FaheemMitha If I were at home I'd tell you the name of the book I have with a great proof that NFA (non-deterministic finite automata) can do all the work a regex (that doesn't do look ahead or look behind) can do. I'll try to remember to tell you later
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@MattE.Эллен well go home, then.
Or is the Boris roaming the streets again.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
So if you want look forward or look behind, you get runaway exponential behavior along with it, then?
 
tchrist
tchrist
Potentially.
Especially behind.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Regex again?
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
2:17 PM
Hmm. How much of a problem is that in practice?
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@Cerberus No, not again. This is literally the first time today.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@RegDwigнt not just Boris, parents taking their children home from school as well
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha It usually is not, until it is.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Ok.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@FaheemMitha Burn is used metaphorically for 'consume', and it is a computer game.
@RegDwigнt "Today".
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:18 PM
And in the case of the C PCRE library or Perl itself, we provide with special controls for backtracking which work like the Prolog CUT operator.
One way is to add a + to a quantifier so that it won't backtrack, like \w++ or even .*+ <--- there.
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@MattE.Эллен what do they want them back for?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@RegDwigнt mostly so they don't get arrested for negligence
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@Cerberus you're like those YouTube commenters who watch a whole video and then quote a single bit from it in a comment.
 
tchrist
tchrist
You can also make arbitrary capture-groups that cannot be backtracked into like (?>....) instead of just plain (....).
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Cerberus I've seen multiple slightly different interpretations of this, and it's all a bit confusing. I am still not sure what the original sentence meant.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:20 PM
And finally there are the backtracking control verbs like (*FAIL) and (*SKIP) and such.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist All this within Perl, and therefore also within PCRE?
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha Both.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@MattE.Эллен The first and third ones are actually different constructions. But, yes, the second one is the same construction. Also a rather colloquial source.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
So PCRE is equivalent to Perl's regex handling?
 
RegDwigнt
RegDwigнt
@MattE.Эллен well it's been three years since Grenfell and nobody got arrested for that, so I wouldn't be too concerned.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
2:22 PM
@tchrist Atomic groups, are they not?
Somehow, I often find that using + or atomic groups often does not make a Regex a whole lot more efficient, even when I expected it to.
Could be because of implicit, built-in optimisations in the Regex engine?
@FaheemMitha Oh, it's not really important. It was just about syntax.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:52 PM
@Cerberus yes
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Right.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@Cerberus No. It's just that you mostly have to use them when it's wasting its time backtracking on something that can never work with a different repetition combo.
Usually it makes things fail faster instead of taking forever to do so.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist That is what I do, when I notice it could do unnecessary backtracking so I block that.
Yes, mostly when failing to match.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Sometimes it sidesteps exponential holes that allow it to proceed to a match state.
I usually only do this when I specifically notice the unnecessary backtracking, not by default.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
But someone suggested to me that engines do lots of optimisations in the background.
 
tchrist
tchrist
2:55 PM
@FaheemMitha It's very close, but always a step or two behind release-wise.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist I use it erratically, also because various engines do not support it.
 
tchrist
tchrist
I never care about regex engines I don't use. :)
So like the C#/dot-Net engine allows for variable-width lookbehinds.
Few others do so.
Thing is, everything we're talking about here is from Perl. If you want vanilla regexes for NFA purposes, you have very few operators available.
But Russ's re2 engine is available for several programming languages, including Go and C and C++ and perl.
And that one has more features, while still being solvable with a non-backtracking NFA.
You want to use a nonbacktracking NFA/DFA if you're responding to requests on the internet because you can't take forever.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
3:32 PM
@tchrist Ok. So I suppose one wants to use the most recent version available.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist Nice.
NFA?
 
tchrist
tchrist
1 hour ago, by tchrist
Nondeterministic finite automaton
In automata theory, a finite-state machine is called a deterministic finite automaton (DFA), if each of its transitions is uniquely determined by its source state and input symbol, and reading an input symbol is required for each state transition.A nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA), or nondeterministic finite-state machine, does not need to obey these restrictions. In particular, every DFA is also an NFA. Sometimes the term NFA is used in a narrower sense, referring to an NFA that is not a DFA, but not in this article. Using the subset construction algorithm, each NFA can be translated to...
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Oh...
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
> Using imagery focused on compassion can help people suffering from stress associated with physical pain, a new study from the University of Derby has shown. medicalxpress.com/news/…
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Yesterday, someone asked me, "what should I call the symbol ? in Regex?".
It was difficult to come up with an answer.
 
tchrist
tchrist
3:38 PM
"hook"
"maybe"
"optional"
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Cerberus So you're a regex user too?
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@FaheemMitha Certanly.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
In which language?
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist OK but no term encompassing all uses of the symbol, right?
@FaheemMitha Mostly Javascript, Autohotkey, Python.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Cerberus Ok.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
3:40 PM
Some Lua, PHP, I don't know what else.
Autohotkey has PCRE, though an old version.
Javascript's Regex is very limited.
I think Python also has PCRE.
Or maybe not?
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
I think major languages have PCRE, since it's a C library.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Well, Javascript does not.
Or is that not major?
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@Cerberus Are you sure?
Perhaps I should replace "major" with "written in C or C++".
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@FaheemMitha Quite!
I lacks various major features.
It doesn't even have named capture groups.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
Maybe JS isn't written in C?
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
3:44 PM
I have no idea.
Nor does it have lookbehind.
Nor atomic groups.
Etc.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha There isn't a single implementation.
 
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
Looks like JS is a standard.
Not a single implementation.
@tchrist Right. Just looked at the Wikipedia page.
 
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