A REALLY Quick Nerd Test

[gb2000ie]

If you either get what this means, or why it's funny, you're definitely a Nerd

/bb|[^b]{2}/

B.

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

If get either get what this means, or why it's funny, you're definitely a Nerd

/bb|[^b]{2}/

B.

:rofl::rofl::rofl: so you debug girls now GB?

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

:rofl::rofl::rofl: so you debug girls now GB?

Etre ou ne pas etre tel est la question... but I'm not sure - wrote it in French not to give away the answer. Let me know if I'm right

 

[gb2000ie]

Etre ou ne pas etre tel est la question... but I'm not sure - wrote it in French not to give away the answer. Let me know if I'm right

Assuming I remember as much French as I think I do, then yes, it is a Perl-style regular expression for that famous quotation.

B.

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

Assuming I remember as much French as I think I do, then yes, it is a Perl-style regular expression for that famous quotation.

B.

yeeeeeh I'm a nerd LOL ) ) )

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

Assuming I remember as much French as I think I do, then yes, it is a Perl-style regular expression for that famous quotation.

B.

I do quite a lot of PHP programming so when I checked it I found it funny for some reasons and yes it is a funny one

 

[slimjim]

Well I guess I am a nerd too...

btw.... There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary, and those who don't.

 

[XMan101]

I think I'm pleased to say I didn't get it )

 

[smallsleepyrascalcat]

I know now what it means (because my French is good enough to understand Jake), but I don't know how to read it... I get the bb, but the rest...

 

[gb2000ie]

Well I guess I am a nerd too...

btw.... There are only 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Love that one!

 

[gb2000ie]

It's what's called a "regular expression", a fancy name for a limited type of pattern definition, and it's in the syntax of the Perl programming language. Perl Regular expressions were the best way of specifying patterns for a long time, so other languages 'stole' the Perl syntax, including PHP (hence slimjim getting it), and JavaScript.

Lets break it down:

the / on each end just denotes the start and end of the pattern, so you can mentally strip those away to leave just:

bb|[^b]{2}

the first bit is easy, bb is the patern of the letter b followed by the letter b - i.e. two bees, or "to be".

The vertical bar is the symbol for 'OR', so we get "to be or ".

Then things get a bit messier, anything inside [] defines a list of allowed characters, and ^ means that the list should be inverted, so [^b] means "anything that's not a b", or 'not b'.

Finally, a number inside {} denotes how many of what ever came before should be in the pattern, so {2} means two of what ever came before, which in this case is [^b], so 'not to be'.

Put it all together and you get "to be or not to be" as a Perl regular expression.

If you were to use the code for real it would match any piece of text that contained two b characters followed by two of anything else.

Yes, it's very very nerdy, and you can spot a Perl programmer a mile away because it'll take him a second at most to get what that means

BTW - regular expressions are very useful, if you want to validate that someone entered a social security number into a text field and not something else, you could use this RE:

/^\d{3}\-\d{2}\-\d{4}$/

which means "the start of the string (^), followed by three digits (\d{3}), followed by a dash (\-), followed by two digits (\d{2}), followed by a dash (\-), followed by four digits (\d{4}), followed by the end of the string ($)".

You use the same to check email addresses, URLs, time, date, and so on and so forth.

B.

 

[777]

Have to confess I was ready to google it but fortunately you had posted an answer I'm completely hopeless with anything like this, being dyslexic the characters just swirl and it takes me a long time to grasp what is there

 

[Whisper]

No, it seems I'm not a nerd but from Jake's reply I could understood it, so at least there's little bit left from my French "skills"

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

No, it seems I'm not a nerd but from Jake's reply I could understood it, so at least there's little bit left from my French "skills"

Oh you guys cheated LOL :rofl::rofl::rofl: I understand pearl programming because I program in PHP and have been programming C++ years ago... you guys cheated so badly hahahaha. if you actually put that expression anywhere in a script it does pretty much nothing LOL

 

[Whisper]

Oh you guys cheated LOL :rofl::rofl::rofl: I understand pearl programming because I program in PHP and have been programming C++ years ago... you guys cheated so badly hahahaha. if you actually put that expression anywhere in a script it does pretty much nothing LOL

How I was supposed to know that you had put the answer to your reply, yep, it is actually your fault *trying to look innocent*
Really Jake, it is... evil (oh I just couldn't resist, I really tried) to say we cheated ) ) )

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

 

[brmstn69]

Oh you guys cheated LOL :rofl::rofl::rofl: I understand pearl programming because I program in PHP and have been programming C++ years ago... you guys cheated so badly hahahaha. if you actually put that expression anywhere in a script it does pretty much nothing LOL

Like your the ONLY person here who speaks French...:duh:

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

Like your the ONLY person here who speaks French...:duh:

I am well aware of that but yet one have to know what the expression means :rofl:

 

[SophieSweets]

My Quick Nerd Test would be a lot Simpler...

'Horace goes _______'?

This tests for a different kind of nerd

 

[777]

My Quick Nerd Test would be a lot Simpler...

'Horace goes _______'?

This tests for a different kind of nerd

I guess that depends how old the person is too... I used to... you know, but never really became this kind of a nerd

 

[SimSima]

I didn't get it. I don't understand computer language!