GNU bug report logs - #58727
29.0.50; rx doc: Semantics of RX...

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From: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de>
To: 58727 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#58727: 29.0.50; rx doc: Semantics of RX...
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2022 04:32:17 +0200

Hello,

please document the semantics of multiple RXs for the RX repetition
operators (and maybe grouping operators, too).

The resulting regexps are concatenating like with an implicit `seq'.
This is not trivial, though: in stringish regexps the repetition
operators are only unary, and different interpretations would make sense
for `rx' (implicit `seq', implicit `or').

The docstring of `rx' doesn't tell anything about this.  The manual has
sentences like

| ‘(zero-or-more RX...)’
| ‘(0+ RX...)’
|      Match the RXs zero or more times.  Greedy by default.
|      Corresponding string regexp: ‘A*’ (greedy), ‘A*?’ (non-greedy)

but that suffers from the same problem that the semantics of A are not
clear: A == (seq RX...) ?

Oh, and maybe let's also make more clear that `rx' always cares about
implicit grouping when necessary.  For example, in
(info "(elisp) Rx Constructs") it's not trivial that e.g. in

‘(seq RX...)’
‘(sequence RX...)’
‘(: RX...)’
‘(and RX...)’
     Match the RXs in sequence.  Without arguments, the expression
     matches the empty string.
     Corresponding string regexp: ‘AB...’ (subexpressions in sequence).

`rx' silently adds shy grouping to the result, and the corresponding string
regexp in this case is more precisely \(?:AB...\).  I think it is enough
to mention this implicit grouping feature once, but it is important to
spell it out.
  

TIA,

Michael.

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