Chapter 45. Textual Polishing
Perform simple textual substitutions before more serious processing.
3 hours ago => 3.hours.ago
Internal DSLs are often easier to develop, particularly if you’re not comfortable with parsing. However, the resulting DSLs contain host language artifacts that can are awkward for nonprogrammers to read.
Textual Polishing uses a series of simple regular expression substitutions to smooth some of these out.
45.1 How It Works
Textual Polishing is a very simple technique. It involves running a series of text substitutions on the DSL script before it gets to the parser. A simple example is if readers find the use of dots for method calls off-putting. A simple substitution of dots for spaces can turn 3 hours ago into
Get Domain Specific Languages now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
