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Why I like functional programming

by tilly (Archbishop)
on Oct 01, 2000 at 03:25 UTC ( [id://34786]=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

<update mode=confession> I know that I posted this years ago, and other bugs in the post are not being fixed, but this one is a big one. When I wrote the node I didn't realize that the term functional programming was already in use for something different than what I describe below. As a result I seem to have introduced a bad meme into the Perl world. Read on, but do understand that what I describe as functional programming isn't quite what is normally meant by the term...</update>

One of my favorite quotes of all time on programming comes from Tom Christiansen:

A programmer who hasn't been exposed to all four of the imperative, functional, objective, and logical programming styles has one or more conceptual blindspots. It's like knowing how to boil but not fry. Programming is not a skill one develops in five easy lessons.
Absolutely. Perl does the first three very naturally, but most Perl programmers only encounter imperative and objective programming. Many never even encounter objective, though that is not a problem for many here.

However I am a fan of functional programming. I mention this from time to time but say that it takes a real code example to show what I mean. Well I decided to take my answer at RE (tilly) 1: Regexes vs. Maintainability to Big, bad, ugly regex problem and turn it into a real problem. What I chose to do is implement essentially the check specified at Perl Monks Approved HTML tags, with an escape mode, checks to make sure tags balance, and some basic error reporting when it looks like people were trying to do stuff but it isn't quite right.

If you have ever wondered what possible use someone could find for anonymous functions, closures, and that kind of thing, here is your chance to find out.

For those who do not know what Tom was talking about, here are some quick definitions:
  1. Imperative programming is when you spend your time telling the computer what to do.
  2. Functional programming, build some functions, put them together into bigger ones, when you are done run your masterpiece and call it a day.
  3. Objective programming access properties of things and tell them to accomplish tasks for you without caring what happens under the hood.
  4. Logical programming starts with a series of rules and actions. When no more rules require acting on, you are done.
We encounter two of these a lot in Perl. Imperative programming is just plain old procedural. It is what most of us do most of the time. Its biggest benefit is that it is close to what the computer does and how we think. Also we see a lot of objective programming - that is usually called Object-Oriented Programming. It offers a layer of abstraction between what you want done and how it is done. This hides details and makes the end code easier to maintain. In the long run it also has benefits in terms of code-reuse.

We don't encounter the other two as often. Logical programming is familiar to some here from writing makefiles. The win is that you can handle very complex sets of dependencies without having to stop and think about what exactly will happen. Since that is exactly the kind of problem that make try to solve, it is a good fit there.

The most famous representative of functional programming is Lisp. Functional programming offers similar benefits to object-oriented programming. Where they differ for me is that it lets you think about problems differently, and I frequently find that I can very easily get all of my configuration information into one place.

What follows is fairly complex, so I will present it in pieces. If you have not seen functional programming this will likely feel uncomfortable to read. I certainly found the first examples I dealt with to be frustrating since I could not figure out where anything happened. But just remember that virtually everything here is just setting up functions for later use, skip to the end if you need to, and you should be fine.

Basic sanity

Import stuff, be careful, etc.
use strict; use vars qw(@open_tags %handlers %bal_tag_attribs); use HTML::Entities qw(encode_entities); use Carp;

Configuration information

This has the configuration rules for all of the special stuff we will allow. Tags and attributes, characters that matter to html that we will let pass through, and the [code] escape sequence. Note that I did not use <code> because I wanted this to be easy to post.

For a real site you might want several of these with different rules for what is allowed depending on the section and the user.

# This covers the majority of rules %bal_tag_attribs = ( # Tags with ok attributes a => [qw(href name target)], # I added this one, and there is a <col> later as well colgroup => [ qw(align span valign width) ], font => ["color size"], ol => ["type"], # Balancing <p> looks strange but align needs closing p => ["align"], table => [ qw(bgcolor border cellpadding cellspacing width) ], td => [ qw(align bgcolor colspan height rowspan valign width) ], tr => [qw(align valign width)], # Ones without attributes # I omitted the 'nbsp' tag, should that be 'nobr'? map {$_, []} qw( b big blockquote br dd dl dt em h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 hr i li pre small strike strong sub sup tt u ul ), ); # Initialize default handlers %handlers = ( # literal text with special meanings we allow ( map {my $tag = $_; ($tag, sub {return $tag})} qw(& <br> <col>) ), # Various html tags &ret_tag_handlers(%bal_tag_attribs), # And our escape mode. '[code]' => ret_escape_code(qr(\[/code\]), "[code]"), );

Implementation of the handlers

This is the most complicated section by far. This sets up functions for all of the tasks we will want done. If you were to rewrite this program in a procedural fashion, you would find that the logic in this section either would be repeated many, many times, or else you would get into a lot of very complex case statements.

That we don't need to do that shows code reuse in action!

A complex site would probably need more in this section (for instance the linking logic we use), but when all is said and done, not much.

sub ret_const_tag_open { my $tag = shift; return sub { push @open_tags, $tag; return "<$tag>"; }; } sub ret_escape_code { my $end_pat = shift; my $name = shift; return sub { my $t_ref = shift; if ($$t_ref =~ m=\G(.*?)$end_pat=gs) { return "<pre>" . encode_entities($1) . "</pre>"; } else { return show_err("Unmatched $name tag found"); } }; } sub ret_tag_close { my $tag = shift; return sub { my @searched; while (@open_tags) { my $open = pop(@open_tags); push @searched, $open; if ($open eq $tag) { # Close em! return join '', map "</$_>", @searched; } } # No you cannot close a tag you didn't open! @open_tags = reverse @searched; pos(${$_[0]}) = 0; return show_err("Unmatched close tag </$tag>"); }; } sub ret_tag_open { # The general case my $tag = shift; my %is_attrib; ++$is_attrib{$_} foreach @_; return sub { my $t_ref = shift; my $text = "<$tag"; while ( $$t_ref =~ /\G(?: \s+ ([\w\d]+) # Value \s*=\s*( # = attribute: [^\s>"'][^\s>]* | # Unquoted "[^"]*" | # Double-quoted '[^']*' # Single-quoted ) | \s*> # End of tag )/gx ) { if ($1) { # Trying to match an attrib if ($is_attrib{ lc($1) }) { $text .= " $1=$2"; } else { pos($$t_ref) = 0; return show_err("Tag '$tag' cannot accept attribute '$1'"); } } else { # Ended text push @open_tags, $tag; return "$text>"; } } return show_err("Unended <$tag> detected"); }; } sub ret_tag_handlers { my %attribs = @_; my @out = (); foreach my $tag (keys %attribs) { if (@{$attribs{$tag}}) { push @out, "<$tag", ret_tag_open($tag, @{$attribs{$tag}}); } else { push @out, "<$tag>", ret_const_tag_open($tag); } push @out, "</$tag>", ret_tag_close($tag); } return @out; } sub show_err { my $err = join '', @_; return "<h2><font color=red>$err</font></h2> "; }

The actual function you call

Note that the documentation of and in the function is as long as the function itself. However this is naturally polymorphic. Even for a very complex site, you likely wouldn't need to touch this function.

In fact you can understand pretty much everything right here. You can add a lot of functionality without getting in the way of your picture of how it all works!

=head1 B<scrub_input()> my $scrubbed_text = scrub_input($raw_text, [$handlers]); This takes a string and an optional ref to a hash of handlers, and returns html-escaped output, except for the sections handled by the handlers which do whatever they want. If handlers are passed their names should be lower case and start with a character matching [^\w\s\d] or else they will not be matched properly. While parsing the string, when they can be matched case insensitively, then the handler is called. It will be passed a reference to $raw_text right after that matches the name of the handler. (pos($raw_text) will point to the end of the name.) It should return the text to be inserted into the output, and set pos($raw_text) to where to continue parsing from, or 0 if no text was handled. Two special handlers that may be used are "pre" and "post" that will be called before and after (respectively) the raw text is processed. For consistency they also get a reference to the raw text. If no handler is passed, it will use \%handlers instead. =cut sub scrub_input { my $raw = shift; local @open_tags; my $handler = shift || \%handlers; $handler->{pre} ||= sub {return '';}; $handler->{post} ||= sub { return join '', map "</$_>", reverse @open_tags; }; my $scrubbed = $handler->{pre}->(\$raw); # This would be faster with the trie code from node 30896. But # that is not the point of this example so I have not done that. # Also note the next line is meant to force an NFA engine to # match the longest alternative first my $re_str = join "|", map {quotemeta} reverse sort keys %$handler; my $is_handled = qr/$re_str/i; while ($raw =~ /\G([\w\d\s]*)/gi) { $scrubbed .= $1; my $pos = pos($raw); if ($raw =~ /\G($is_handled)/g) { $scrubbed .= $handler->{ lc($1) }->(\$raw); } unless (pos($raw)) { if (length($raw) == $pos) { # EXIT HERE # return $scrubbed . $handler->{post}->(\$raw); } else { my $char = substr($raw, $pos, 1); pos($raw) = $pos + 1; $scrubbed .= &encode_entities($char); } } } confess("I have no idea how I got here!"); }
To see it all together, just click on d/l code below.

For the curious I actually wrote the configuration section first, then the function at the end and useless handlers. (Actually ret_tag_handlers returned an empty list.) I then grew the handlers. First I added the escape mode. Then I started escaping tags with no attributes allowed. Next came closing tags. And finally tags with attributes allowed.

Enjoy. :-)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Why I like functional programming
by dchetlin (Friar) on Oct 01, 2000 at 05:20 UTC

    Hello, I am the HTML::Parser nazi. I go around commenting on other people's attempts to parse HTML, and I always yell at them for trying to do something that's very hard themselves, and tell them to use HTML::Parser.

    I intended to do that here.

    I tried to break tilly's code.

    I failed.

    Damn.

    So while I still don't necessarily understand why one wouldn't use HTML::Parser, as far as I can see this is clean. Excellent stuff. I'm very impressed.

    -dlc

      HTML::Parser would actually be an awful fit for this problem. If you don't believe it, try to duplicate the functionality the code already has.

      The problem is that the incoming document is not HTML. It is a document in some markup language, some of whose tags look like html, but which isn't really. I don't want to spend time worrying about "broken html" that I am going to just escape. I don't want to worry about valid html that I want to deny. I want to report custom errors. (Hey, why not instead of just denying pre-monks image tags, also give an error with a link to the FAQ?) And I want to include markup tags you won't find in HTML.

      I did a literal escape above using [code] above. I submit that HTML::Parser would not help with that. OK, so that should be <code> for this site, but this site would want to implement a couple of escaped I didn't. For instance the following handler would be defined for this site for [ (assuming that $site_base was http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl and hoping that I don't make any typos):

      use URI::Escape qw(uri_escape); sub { my $t_ref = shift; if ($$t_ref =~ /\G([^\|\]]+)(?:\|(\|[^\|\]]+))?\]/g) { my $node_ref = "$site_base?node=" . uri_escape($1); my $node_name = encode_entities($2 || $1); return qq(<a href="$node_ref">$node_name</a>); } else { return show_err("Incomplete node link?"); } }
      And, of course, given $node_id there is probably a function get_node_name available. And we have that lastnode_id the site keeps track of. So we also need a handler for [:// to link by ID, and that would be generated by something like this:
      sub ret_link_by_id { my $tracking = shift; # eg "&lastnode_id=23453" sub { my $t_ref = shift; if ($$t_ref =~ /\G([1-9]\d*)(?:\|([^\|\]]+))?\]/g) { my $node_id = $1; my $name = $2 || get_node_name($node_id); my $node_name = encode_entities($name); my $url = "$site_base?node_id=$node_id$tracking"; return qq(<a href="$url">$node_name</a>); } else { return show_err("Incomplete node_id link?"); } } }
      If this still looks to your eyes like a slightly hacked up html spec, let me show you a feature that I dearly wish that this site had. Stop and think about what the following handler for \ does:
      sub { my $t_ref = shift; if ($$t_ref =~ /\G([&\[\]<>\\])/g) { return encode_entities($1); } }
      Do you see it? Consider what would happen to the following string:
      You can link by URL like this: <pre> \<a href="http://www.perlmonks.org/"\><a href=http://www.perlmonks.o +rg/>Perl Monks</a>\</a\> </pre>
      Got it yet?

      No more looking up those pesky escape codes! :-)

      My apologies for using you as a foil, but you just let me illustrate Tom's point perfectly. All of the stuff I am saying is obvious to anyone who has played with functional techniques, but since you haven't you are simply unable to see the amazing potential inherent in this method of code organization. And I happen to know that you are not a bad programmer, but this was a blind spot for you.

      Time to put down the pot, we aren't boiling now. This is a frying pan and I feel like an omelette. :-)

        No, you're absolutely right that HTML::Parser in and of itself wouldn't do a good job for this specific problem. My point in posting was really twofold:
        • Writing a parser like this is very very difficult to get right, and usually it's better to find an existing tool that's already been stress-tested. You got it right because you know what you're doing, but I doubt many others would be able to execute like that.
        • Ovid's initial problem, which apparently was the seed for your post, was tailor-made for HTML::Parser.
        As far as functional programming goes, I'm not a stranger (I just recently replaced Perl code to walk two trees and find differences with compiled ML because it was faster and more conceptually simple), and I certainly support seeing more functional Perl. I'm not necessarily convinced that functional techniques helped in this particular program that much; my claim is that it worked so well because of the strength of the programmer. However, I do appreciate the elegance of the solution. But I continue to submit that your average Perl programmer would botch this problem subtly, and it would make more sense for them to use some pre-rolled solution.

        -dlc

Functional take 2
by tilly (Archbishop) on Feb 03, 2001 at 10:51 UTC
    OK, this reimplementation is for nate. I really did start out thinking I was going to make the handler modal, but when I got done it just didn't make sense. For instance the hack to handle tables (which was really the reason for wanting it in the first place) would have resulted in a circular reference which is a memory leak.

    What I did instead was added several hooks for pre and post filters. And made the final routine return a subroutine that processes markup. It would be possible to actually use this in a modal way, just set the pos() to the end of the string and then have the post hook set the pos() to whatever you wanted it to be. I did most of the work required, I just didn't think it made sense for the problem at hand.

    For people other than nate, this change fixes a few minor bugs, can be used to handle the attribute "checked" (that ability is not shown here), can be used to allow additional validations of attribute values, and (very important) allows you to refuse to let new table tags to be opened outside of a table that you have opened.

    First a module, MarkupHandler.pm. This does most of the "reasoning".

    package MarkupHandler; use Carp; use HTML::Entities qw(encode_entities); use Exporter; @ISA = 'Exporter'; @EXPORT_OK = qw( ret_bal_tag_handlers ret_escape_code ret_ok_attr_val ret_scrubber ); use strict; use vars qw(@open_tags); # Gets the value of a tag attribute sub get_attr_val { my $t_ref = shift; if ( $$t_ref =~ / \G\s*=\s*( [^\s>"'][^\s>]* | # Unquoted "[^"]*" | # Double-quoted '[^']*' # Single-quoted ) /gx ) { return $1; } else { return ('', "no value found"); } } sub ret_bal_tag_handlers { my @out = (); while (@_) { my $tag = shift; my $name = $tag; if (ref($tag)) { if (exists $tag->{name}) { $name = $tag->{name}; } else { confess("Tags must have name attributes"); } } else { $tag = {name => $name}; } my $attribs = shift; if (@$attribs) { push @out, "<$name", ret_tag_open($name, @$attribs); } else { push @out, "<$name>", ret_const_tag_open($name); } # Rewrite handler? if (exists $tag->{pre}) { push @out, wrap_handler($tag->{pre}, pop(@out), ''); } push @out, "</$name>", ret_tag_close($name); if (exists $tag->{post}) { push @out, wrap_handler('', pop(@out), $tag->{post}); } } return @out; } # Many tags have no attributes allowed. Handle # them efficiently. sub ret_const_tag_open { my $tag = shift; return sub { push @open_tags, $tag; return "<$tag>"; }; } # Returns the basic "literal escape" that you see for # code. sub ret_escape_code { my $end_pat = shift; my $name = shift; return ( $name, sub { my $t_ref = shift; if ($$t_ref =~ m=\G(.*?)$end_pat=gs) { return "<pre>" . encode_entities($1) . "</pre>"; } else { return show_err("Unmatched $name tag found"); } } ); } # Generate an attribute handler based on an "ok value" test. # Note that quotes on the attribute will exist in the # value passed to the ok test. sub ret_ok_attr_val { my $ok_test = shift; wrap_handler( '', \&get_attr_val, sub { my $text = shift; if ($ok_test->($text)) { $text; } else { return ('', "Illegal val '$text'"); } } ); } # Pass a list of case/handler pairs, returns an anonymous # sub that processes those pairs. sub ret_scrubber { my %handler = @_; # Sanity check foreach my $case (keys %handler) { unless (UNIVERSAL::isa($handler{$case}, 'CODE')) { carp("Case '$case' dropped - handlers must be functions"); delete $handler{$case}; } } $handler{pre} ||= sub {return '';}; $handler{post} ||= sub { return join '', map "</$_>", reverse @open_tags; }; # Sorted in reverse so that '<br' comes *before* '<b'... my $re_str = join "|", map {quotemeta} reverse sort keys %handler; my $is_handled = qr/$re_str/i; return sub { my $t_ref = shift; my $scrubbed; local @open_tags; while ($$t_ref =~ /\G([\w ]*)/g) { $scrubbed .= $1; my $pos = pos($$t_ref); if ($$t_ref =~ /\G($is_handled)/g) { my ($chunk, @err) = $handler{ lc($1) }->($t_ref); if (@err) { pos($$t_ref) = 0; $scrubbed .= show_err(@err); } else { $scrubbed .= $chunk; # Obscure bug fix. You cannot match 2 zero # length patterns in a row, this resets the # flag so you can. pos($$t_ref) = pos($$t_ref); } } unless (pos($$t_ref)) { if (length($$t_ref) == $pos) { # EXIT HERE # return $scrubbed . $handler{post}->($t_ref); } else { my $char = substr($$t_ref, $pos, 1); pos($$t_ref) = $pos + 1; $scrubbed .= encode_entities($char); } } } confess("I have no idea how I got here!"); } } # Returns a sub that closes a tag sub ret_tag_close { my $tag = shift; return sub { my @searched; while (@open_tags) { my $open = pop(@open_tags); push @searched, $open; if ($open eq $tag) { # Close em! return join '', map "</$_>", @searched; } } # No you cannot close a tag you didn't open! @open_tags = reverse @searched; pos(${$_[0]}) = 0; return show_err("Unmatched close tag </$tag>"); }; } # The general open tag sub ret_tag_open { my $tag = shift; my %attr_test; foreach (@_) { if (ref($_)) { foreach my $attrib (keys %$_) { $attr_test{lc($attrib)} = $_->{$attrib}; } } else { $attr_test{lc($_)} = \&get_attr_val; } } return sub { my $t_ref = shift; my $text = "<$tag"; while ($$t_ref =~ /\G(?:\s+(\w+)|\s*>)/g) { if (defined($1)) { my $attrib = lc($1); if (exists $attr_test{$attrib}) { my ($chunk, @err) = $attr_test{$attrib}->($t_ref); if (@err) { return show_err( "While processing '$attrib' in <$tag>:", @err ); } else { $text .= " $attrib=$chunk"; } } else { pos($$t_ref) = 0; return show_err( "Tag '$tag' cannot accept attribute '$attrib'" ); } } else { $text .= ">"; push @open_tags, $tag; return $text; } } return show_err("Unended <$tag> detected"); }; } sub show_err { if (wantarray()) { return ('', @_); } else { my $err = encode_entities(join ' ', grep length($_), @_); return "<h2><font color=red>$err</font></h2> "; } } sub wrap_handler { my $pre = shift() || sub {''}; my $fn = shift(); my $post = shift() || sub {@_}; return sub { my $t_ref = shift; my ($text, @err) = $pre->($t_ref); if (@err) { return show_err($text, @err); } (my $chunk, @err) = $fn->($t_ref); @err ? show_err("$text$chunk", @err) : $post->("$text$chunk"); }; } 1;
    And then the test script that I used with it. (Some of the functionality in this script could definitely be moved to the handler.)
    use strict; use vars qw($table_depth); $table_depth = 0; use MarkupHandler qw( ret_bal_tag_handlers ret_escape_code ret_ok_attr_val ret_scrubber ); my $href_test = ret_ok_attr_val( sub { shift() =~ m-^'?"?(http://|ftp://|mailto:|#)-i; } ); my @bal_tags = ( a => [ qw(name target), {'href' => $href_test} ], font => [qw(color size)], ol => ['type'], p => ['align'], { name => 'table', pre => sub { if (5 > $table_depth++) { return ''; } else { $table_depth--; return ('', "Exceeded maximum table depth\n"); } }, post => sub { if (0 > --$table_depth) { $table_depth = 0; return ("", "Table depth should not be below 0"); } @_; }, }, [qw(bgcolor border cellpadding cellspacing width)], in_table_tags( colgroup => [ qw(align span valign width) ], td => [qw(align bgcolor colspan height rowspan valign width)], tr => [qw(align valign width)], ), map {$_, []} qw( b big blockquote br dd dl dt em h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 hr i li pre small strike strong sub sup tt u ul ), ); my @handlers = ( ret_bal_tag_handlers(@bal_tags), ret_escape_code(qr(\[/code\]), "[code]"), ); my $scrubber = ret_scrubber(@handlers); my $text = <<'EOT'; Hello world. <<<foo>; [code] This is <code>...see the <a href=whatever> being escaped? [/co +de] <b>Hello world</ br></b>ub> <a href="javascript://www.d<a href=http://yada>evil.com" name=happy>he +llo world <a href=http://yada>hello</a> <tr><td> <table><tr> <table> <table> <table> <table> <table> </table> </table> </table> </table> </table> EOT print $scrubber->(\$text); sub in_table_tags { my @out; while (@_) { my $name = shift; push @out, { name => $name, pre => sub { $table_depth ? '' : ('', "Cannot open <$name>, not in table"); }, }, shift(); } return @out; }
    Also some of the other handlers that I had in this thread are likely to be of interest.
      Hello! Perhaps the following page will offer a shorter introduction into a functional programming in Perl.
      http://pobox.com/~oleg/ftp/Scheme/Scheme-in-Perl.txt

      The page shows off the fixpoint combinator, the fold combinator, closures, higher-order functions, and implementations of a a few algorithms on lists. It's noteworthy how easy it was to translate these algorithms from Scheme to Perl. Even the location of parentheses is sometimes similar to that in Scheme notation. The page finishes with examples of improper and circular lists.

      As to parsing of XML in a pure functional style, a SSAX parser may serve as an example:
      http://pobox.com/~oleg/ftp/Scheme/SSAX.scm

      The parser fully supports XML namespaces, character and parsed entities, xml:space, CDATA sections, nested entities, attribute value normalization, etc. The parser offers support for XML validation, to a full or a partial degree. It does not use assignments at all. It could be used to parse HTML too.

      edited: Fri Jan 31 15:23:34 2003 by jeffa - linkafied those URL's

RE: Why I like functional programming
by clemburg (Curate) on Oct 01, 2000 at 16:36 UTC

    For all you out there who now want to learn about functional programming (and the other styles, too) - do yourself a favor and work through this excellent book:

    <cite>Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. The MIT Press, 1996. Second Edition.</cite>

    This book has changed my programming world from ground up. Ok, agreed, it is "challenging", as they like to put it in some reviews. Don't mind. Go forward. Buy it. Read it. Study it. Do the exercises. It's simply the best single book on programming that I know, and the only book that I know that really captures a lot of the "Zen" of programming.

    Update: This book is (incredibly) now available online. Thanks to the Arsdigita people! Great service to all programmers.

    Christian Lemburg
    Brainbench MVP for Perl
    http://www.brainbench.com

RE: Why I like functional programming
by puck (Scribe) on Oct 01, 2000 at 07:35 UTC
    Nice. If I had a bit more time at the moment I'd try writing this in Haskell just as an exercise to see what it would look like in a real functional language. :) I might try it a months or so time, once I've finished exams.

    I have to agree with you that all programmers should try their hand at all the programming styles, even if it's just so they can experience the joy of functional programming first hand!

    Cheers!

Re: Why I like functional programming
by dws (Chancellor) on Feb 02, 2002 at 03:36 UTC
    One tiny nit in an otherwise great piece of code:  return show_err("Unended <$tag> detected"); I suspect that show_err() needs to escape HTML entities. Wrapping its arguments in <font> tags isn't sufficient.

      That is one of several small mistakes in the code. Another is that there is only one allowed font attribute and it makes no sense. Another is that the RE engine has a bit of behaviour that I didn't understand when I wrote the code, and so I need to somewhere insert pos($raw) = pos($raw);. I leave verification that this is not a no-op, plus discovery of how this can lead to a bug, to a close reading of perlre. An important one pointed out by nate is that in reality the post will appear inside of a layout which is itself done with tables. Various tags that start new parts of a table should only be allowed inside of a table that you start. Plus he pointed out that some HTML tags take attributes which do not follow the usual pattern, for instance checkboxes can be "checked".

      For these reasons and more, I did a rewrite at Functional take 2 which should have somewhat fewer bugs. I long ago made the decision that (partly because this site does not keep revision histories) I wanted to leave the original as it was, flaws and all.

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