On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 03:21:50PM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> If you cannot think of a way to detect which strings with @ are probably
> email address and which one are definitely not, I think you are less
> skilled than me.
In other words, you're saying that you do know of such a way. Go ahead,
prove it. Show us how you'd do this.
If you can't do that, then stop wasting everyone's time.
You don't have to provide a full, working, solution; just a prove of
concept will do. So far, though, you have done nothing but advocating
vapourware.
> Aren't you really not capable to make test on a string and to let it
> as it is if the script is not able to determine at 100% the string is
> an email address?
No, and you aren't either. Your mind is able to determine whether
something is an email address, but you cannot capture that process in a
regular expression.
If you think you can, prove it. Provide us with a regular expression
that will match all email addresses on this planet (and *only* email
addresses, nothing else).
I bet you'll fail, and I suppose many people think so too. That's why
nobody can be bothered to go ahead and try what you're suggesting,
because they don't see how.
> What does means impossible in your mail? Impossible for you to
> implement it?
Yes.
> Probably, to be able to do some work, first you need to be willing
> too.
It has to make sense to try. While a computer can theorectically do
anything if given proper instructions, the challenge is to provide a
computer with the right set of instructions. In the end, the limiting
factor is not CPU power, but the skills of the person programming the
computer. So, sure, it's theoretically possible to create a program that
would match all email addresses, and nothing else; but such a program
would need AI to be implemented first.
While, in turn, AI could be created given the proper instructions for a
computer, in practice it isn't; after all, nobody has succeeded to do so
after trying for more than 20 years[1].
If you think you can better them, be my guest. Until you did, though,
please refrain from wasting everybody's time with fantasies that are
only possible inside that foggy brain of yours.
[1] I'm not sure, but I think I read somewhere that when RMS left MIT to
found the FSF, he was working at the AI lab there; hence, 20 years.
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