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Message-ID:  <4E970942.40807@latex-project.org>
Date:         Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:52:34 +0200
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From: Frank Mittelbach <frank.mittelbach@LATEX-PROJECT.ORG>
Subject: Re: Strings, and regular expressions
To: LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de
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Status: R

Am 13.10.2011 17:25, schrieb Lars Hellström:
> Bruno Le Floch skrev 2011-10-12 04.59:

>> You guys are right. I'll add this automatic storage this weekend, and
>> remove the N variants (since they will be done automatically).
>
> I'm not so fond of that idea. I'd expect a bunch of regexps to be
> one-timers used during package initialisation, and keeping all of those
> around forever feels like it will be a lot of bloat. I'd prefer having
> both N and n variants, as in the initial version.

I second Lars's view.  I see nothing wrong with having a regex data type 
where you can precompile expression into and then later use it. The use 
of "n" (inline) and "N" for precompiled is not different than the use of 
"n" and "N" in cases of tl's and other places where we do support both 
"variables" as well as inline material that is used on the fly.

And I'm fairly sure that the convention is not causing issues once in use.

frank