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Discussion on: Advent of Code 2020 Solution Megathread - Day 12: Rain Risk

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Christopher Kruse

I have to ask - why avoid regex use? Seems just another tool in the toolbox.

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Neil Gall

It is another tool in the box, and sometimes even the right tool. But regex is a sub-optimal general solution to what is often a quite specific task. One of my passions in programming is to show that real parsers are almost always better in the long run, and they're not hard to write.

Here's a recording of a talk I did at the Edinburgh Kotlin user's group last year on the subject: vimeo.com/393132096