Ask HN: Are there any jobs where a primary task is writing reg exps?

7 points·priyadarshy··9 comments

> Are there any jobs where a primary task is writing reg exps?

Yes, but they don't pay you, you have to pay them. Just kidding -- you may not be aware that regular expressions are regarded as a somewhat dubious way to solve coding problems.

http://xkcd.com/1171/

At most, the time spent writing regexps is probably measured in minutes per week (or even minutes per month).

https://xkcd.com/208/

I'm well aware of their dubious standing in the world of coding problems.

I'm just wondering if there is a domain of problems where people are employed fulltime to solve the problems with Regular expressions.

> I'm just wondering if there is a domain of problems where people are employed fulltime to solve the problems with Regular expressions.

This is like asking if there are any typing jobs for workers who only press the vowel keys. Maybe, but very unlikely.

Yes, in fact at my current company analysts have to work with them almost daily.

Thank you for sharing. Care to elaborate? — industry sector, company size, type of analysis...

Regex is not as trivial as others claim here. NLP, DSL, Compilers need Regex. If you are working on one of them, your primary job might be writing just that.

Thanks for not just referencing XKCD comics and actually providing an answer.

There seems to be a bias against regular expressions because they've developed a "dubious" standing amongst programmers.

I've used Regex quite a bit doing NLP would love to know more about their use in other fields.

Something such as scraper wiki perhaps

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