zlacker

>>todsac+(OP)
The real punchline is that this is a perfect example of "just enough knowledge to be dangerous." Whoever processed these emails knew enough to know emails aren't plain text, but not enough to know that quoted-printable decoding isn't something you hand-roll with find-and-replace. It's the same class of bug as manually parsing HTML with regex, it works right up until it doesn't, and then you get congressional evidence full of mystery equals signs.

>>ruhith+Vh
> It's the same class of bug as manually parsing HTML with regex, it works right up until it doesn't

I'm sure you already know this one, but for anyone else reading this I can share my favourite StackOverflow answer of all time: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454

>>lvncel+Ko
It took me years to notice, but did you catch that the answer actually subtly misinterprets what the question is asking for?

Guy (in my reading) appears to talk about matching an entire HTML document with regex. Indeed, that is not possible due to the grammars involved. But that is not what was being asked.

What was being asked is whether the individual HTML tags can be parsed via regex. And to my understanding those are very much workable, and there's no grammar capability mismatch either.

>>perchi+oi1
The thing is, even when parsing html "correctly" (whatever that is) regexes will still be used. Sure, There will be a bunch of additional structures and mechanisms involved, but you will be identifying tokens via a bunch of regexes.

So yes, while it is an inspired comidic genius of a rant, and sort of informative in that it opens your eyes to the limitations of regexes, it sort of brushes under the rug all the places that those poor maligned regular expressions will be used when parsing html.

>>somat+nJ1
This is a pragmatic answer. While yes, regex is not proven to be the Most Correct Solution for a generalized parse, when you are sitting down with some data in front of you and you can grab the needed bits with a regex group, why not exactly use this. It might be part of a bigger parsing strategy, sure. But if it gets the job on, that means you can move on to the next thing.