Beginner question :) search and replace in String

Method finder does not find a method for

    'foobarqux' . 'bar' . 'XYZ' . 'fooXYZqux'

and stupid me couldn't find a method on String either.

How to get this done?

+10 internets for solution with regex.

--AA


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On Thu, 31 Dec 2009, Adrian Kuhn wrote:

> Method finder does not find a method for
>
>    'foobarqux' . 'bar' . 'XYZ' . 'fooXYZqux'
>
> and stupid me couldn't find a method on String either.

'foobarqux' copyReplaceAll: 'bar' with: 'XYZ'


Levente

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Levente Uzonyi <leves@...> writes:

> > Method finder does not find a method for
> >
> >    'foobarqux' . 'bar' . 'XYZ' . 'fooXYZqux'
> >
> > and stupid me couldn't find a method on String either.
>
> 'foobarqux' copyReplaceAll: 'bar' with: 'XYZ'

Gosh, in SequencableCollection ... stoopid me :)

Thank you Levente!

--AA




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BTW....shouldn't that be an issue that deserves opening a bug ticket ?




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Adrian
this is fun because I was looking for the same recently and it worked
like a charm with me.

I retried and it worked on both 1.1 11128 and 1.0 rc


On Dec 31, 2009, at 1:04 AM, Adrian Kuhn wrote:


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Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@...> writes:

> this is fun because I was looking for the same recently and it worked
> like a charm with me.

Mebbe my image is foobar.

Anyway, the +10 bounty for a regex solution is still open!

BTW, how do you search for operations involving none literal object with
 method finder?

--AA





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On Dec 31, 2009, at 4:02 PM, Adrian Kuhn wrote:


You can I tried once with Date .... but you have to recreate the object via its representation
                (Date readFrom: '22 December 2009) kind of .

Stef

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> Anyway, the +10 bounty for a regex solution is still open!

'bar' asRegex copy: 'foobarqux' replacingMatchesWith: 'XYZ'

Lukas

--
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http://www.lukas-renggli.ch

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On Thu, 31 Dec 2009, Lukas Renggli wrote:

>> Anyway, the +10 bounty for a regex solution is still open!
>
> 'bar' asRegex copy: 'foobarqux' replacingMatchesWith: 'XYZ'

Or: 'foobarqux' copyWithRegex: 'bar' matchesReplacedWith: 'XYZ'


Levente

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This brings to the forum an interesting debate!  Clearly Levente's solution is the String redirection for Lukas' solution.

Do this method eases programming for newcomers? Or it creates burden as presented in Stan's posting?

AK is IIUC very knowledgeable of tools used in Squeak/Pharo and even though, had difficulty to find this particular method!!

my 0.019999...

--
Cesar Rabak


Em 31/12/2009 14:45, Levente Uzonyi <[hidden email]> escreveu:


On Thu, 31 Dec 2009, Lukas Renggli wrote:

>> Anyway, the +10 bounty for a regex solution is still open!
>
> 'bar' asRegex copy: 'foobarqux' replacingMatchesWith: 'XYZ'

Or: 'foobarqux' copyWithRegex: 'bar' matchesReplacedWith: 'XYZ'


Levente

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 <csrabak@...> writes:

> This brings to the forum an interesting debate!  Clearly Levente's solution
> is the String redirection for Lukas' solution.
>
> Do this method eases programming for newcomers? Or it creates burden as
> presented in Stan's posting?
>
> AK is IIUC very knowledgeable of tools used in Squeak/Pharo and even though,
> had difficulty to find this
> particular method!!

Good point!

To replace parts of a string, I want to send a message to the string not to the
 regex. So without doubt, string should understand such a messages. (I dont
 know to which posting of Stan you're referring though).

Also, I would expect short message names for common operations. Alas none of

    #copyWithRegex:matchesReplacedWith:
    #asRegex + #copy:replacingMatchesWith:
    #copyReplaceAll:with:

is particular short. And to make things words, none of these shows up when auto
 completing #repl... because they all start with copy. Plus strings are nested
 in such a deep hierarchy that reading all understood messages won't scale.  

Personally, I would love to have a #gsub:with: on String. It is short and uses
 established vocabulary.

--AA



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On Thu, 31 Dec 2009, [hidden email] wrote:

> This brings to the forum an interesting debate!  Clearly Levente's solution is the String redirection for Lukas' solution.
>
> Do this method eases programming for newcomers? Or it creates burden as presented in Stan's posting?

Definitely, if you know how to search for methods. I was looking for a
regex solution and found it in the *VB-regex category.

>
> AK is IIUC very knowledgeable of tools used in Squeak/Pharo and even though, had difficulty to find this particular method!!
>

MethodFinder is not up-to-date.


Levente

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On Thu, 31 Dec 2009, Adrian Kuhn wrote:

Please no, smalltalk is not awk or ruby and noone should expect that
these cryptic function names are well known. Message names should be
as descriptive as possible, this enables understanding the code without
documentation. Short message names have no advantage, we are not in the
80's.


Levente

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+ 1 :)


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Em 31/12/2009 15:52, Adrian Kuhn <[hidden email]> escreveu:

OK, so the redirection of the messages to String makes sense.  I would
only  gripe about the  protocol it appears right now: *vb-regex is the
_implementation_ of the method's functionality, but from a [programer]
user POV it  would be  more likely to another  one (perhaps "searching
and replace").

Alas, I normally stay away of these discussions because I'm intoxicated
by other programming  idioms (like sed/AWK/Perl/Python/Ruby) which uses
a very compact syntax for these operations and are now a lingua franca.

>  Personally, I  would love  to have a  #gsub:with: on String.  It is
> short and uses established vocabulary.

Yes it would be an adaptation of the above idioms to Smalltalk.


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Levente Uzonyi <leves@...> writes:

> > Personally, I would love to have a #gsub:with: on String. It is short and
> > uses established vocabulary.
>
> Please no, smalltalk is not awk or ruby and noone should expect that
> these cryptic function names are well known. Message names should be
> as descriptive as possible, this enables understanding the code without
> documentation. Short message names have no advantage, we are not in the
> 80's.

I dare to disagree :)

Growing a language *and* compressing it.

There is two directions for natural growth of a language. Composing complex
 expressions from simple ones (see Guy Steele's classic OOPSLA keynote) *and*
 shortening the name of often the most common operations. The latter is clearly
 something that should happen overtime as an evolutionary process and not up
 front. Akira Tanaka refers to this as the "huffman coding" of API design. I
 have written about that on my blog [1].

So method names should initially be as descriptive as possible, but often used
 method names should get a short alias. In 80 when Smalltalk was fresh,
 #copyReplaceAll:with: was a revolutionary short "huffman encoding" for like 20
 lines of C (or worse) code. Smalltalk was visionary in using long method names
 in the 80ies, but to each anti-thesis there is a synthesis. Today we are 30
 years later, and "gsub" has established itself as a generally known name for
 replacing all occurrences of a pattern in a string. IMHO it has evolved from
 what once used to be a cryptic function name to a proper programming term of
 its own.

We can think of other mebbe more Smalltalkesque huffman codings also, eg  

    'foobarqux' at: 'bar' put: 'XYZ'.

with a double dispatch on the parameter of the #at: keyword, this would even
 open up the API of String for unlimited extensions by clients without
 cluttering it with dozens of new messages. So you could use integers, strings,
 regeces, et cetera...

Well, just brainstorming :)

--AA


[1]: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~akuhn/blog/2009/one-letter-method-names/



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On Fri, 1 Jan 2010, Adrian Kuhn wrote:

Why didn't it happen to smalltalk? I guess because the language tries to
mimic natural languages. Btw I can't come up with a language that changed
it's core library function names to shorter ones.

> have written about that on my blog [1].

I read your blog post and I think that your suggestions are not generally
useful. In smalltalk where you can print, inspect and explore any object
  Object >> #p is not really useful. Logging to Transcript is a bad
practice anyway.

Object >> #h instead of #halt? You must be kidding. Saving 3 letters when
you have code completion?

List = OrderedCollection? List new ===> an OrderedCollection() ?


Which is more readable?

List new << 'Lorem' << 'ipsum' << 'dolor'
vs
{ 'Lorem'. 'ipsum'. 'dolor' }

'Expected <1p> but got <2p> (using <3s>)' e: value e: expected e: symbol
vs
'Expected <1p> but got <2p> (using <3s>)' expandMacrosWithArguments: {
    value. expected. symbol }

'Regex are aaaaaaaaaawesome!' =~ 'a*wesome'r
vs
'Regex are aaaaaaaaaawesome!' matchesRegex: 'a*wesome'


(Most of the time I use #format: instead of #expandMacros* and never
seen any code using #expandMacros* that wasn't written by me, your code
is the first. Possibly because it has no documentation/examples.)


>
> So method names should initially be as descriptive as possible, but often used
> method names should get a short alias. In 80 when Smalltalk was fresh,
> #copyReplaceAll:with: was a revolutionary short "huffman encoding" for like 20
> lines of C (or worse) code. Smalltalk was visionary in using long method names

#copyReplaceAll:with: is just a library method, a C library could have a
similar function, but C libraries can't be explored like smalltalk
libraries. In C you have to look up the docs or google a bit to find a
function that fits your needs. In smalltalk you can browse the class
hierarchy or in squeak/pharo you can use the MethodFinder besides the docs
and the internet.

> in the 80ies, but to each anti-thesis there is a synthesis. Today we are 30
> years later, and "gsub" has established itself as a generally known name for
> replacing all occurrences of a pattern in a string. IMHO it has evolved from

People familiar with awk or ruby will know what gsub does but others won't.


Levente

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Levente Uzonyi <leves@...> writes:

> Why didn't it happen to smalltalk? I guess because the language tries to
> mimic natural languages. Btw I can't come up with a language that changed
> it's core library function names to shorter ones.

The very same natural language argument can be used in favor of my point as
 well :)

That is, if you *really* want to mimic the entire bandwidth of natural language,
 you should also mimic the tendency of natural languages to introduce
 abbreviations for common concepts. This is an *essential* part of any natural
 language.

What should be said is that one should use whatever works best for himself. But
 a language that does not offer abbreviations to those that seek for them can
 IMHO not be called natural. The "huffman coding" presented in Akira's paper
 introduces shorter *aliases* for common methods. So you can pick and use what
 you want. So his paper is exactly about how they proceed when introducing
 short aliases in the evolution of the Ruby API. The full paper can be found
 here http://www.citeulike.org/article/6174874

> Object >> #p is not really useful. Logging to Transcript is a bad practice
> anyway.

Print-outs are not *per se* bad practice. They have their justification and
 should be part of anyones debugging tool set. So even if you dont agree with
 abbreviating print-out to #p, you should not ban them from you tool set! For
 example, nothing beats print-outs when you need to trace a feed of events. You
 would not want to put an #inspect inside a loop that is taken 10'000 times :)  

Speaking of loops, I changed #h to abbreviate #haltOnce rather than #halt. At
 least for my style of debugging, that proofed to be more useful.

I won't comment on the rest, some prefer concise language, some like to keep it
 verbose. My point is that a language should offer short aliases for common
 terms, and I guess all of my examples are common enough to qualify for a
 shorter aliases based on that criterion--if you want to mimic the evolution of
 abbreviations in natural language.

--AA


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On 05/01/2010 00:02, Adrian Kuhn wrote:
>
> I won't comment on the rest, some prefer concise language, some like to keep it
>  verbose. My point is that a language should offer short aliases for common
>  terms, and I guess all of my examples are common enough to qualify for a
>  shorter aliases based on that criterion--if you want to mimic the evolution of
>  abbreviations in natural language.
>
>  

Please bear in mind that natural languages have much more redundancy and
less precision than programming languages.

In addition, programming languages have handy tools like autocompletion
that natural languages don't, making abbreviations less useful :)

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On 1/4/2010 5:02 PM, Adrian Kuhn wrote:
> Levente Uzonyi<leves@...>  writes:
> That is, if you *really* want to mimic the entire bandwidth of natural language,
>   you should also mimic the tendency of natural languages to introduce
>   abbreviations for common concepts. This is an *essential* part of any natural
>   language.

IMHO, abbreviations are evil and have no place in Smalltalk and is not
an essential part of natural *spoken* language.  If one can't read one's
code out loud in plain words, then something is wrong with the code.
Abbreviations make no sense at all in the era of code completion and
intellisense.

--
Ramon Leon
http://onsmalltalk.com

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