Fparsec vs regular expressions [closed]

Question

Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.

Closed 8 years ago.

Improve this question

What is the advantage of using a library like FParsec for parsing text over using plain regular expressions from a .NET language?

Answer 1

FParsec can recognise (at least) context-free grammars whereas regular expressions can only recognise regular languages, at least without using somewhat hacky extensions.

One example of something you can't do with a regular language is bracket matching, i.e. tracking the number of opening and closing brackets and make sure that they match up.

Of course you can emulate this with regular expressions by using them repeatedly, but embedding the behaviour into a single parser is significantly cleaner.