software patents being evil is a general argument against this that i can buy.

but the argument that "Every day, all over the world, there are coders solving software problems JUST LIKE THIS ONE"? no. i can't buy that. i've never seen this done before and, as far as i can tell, no one posting can show that something JUST LIKE THIS ONE has already been done.

and since this would clearly be useful (nearly every html form on the web could benefit from real-time validation not to mention proper error identification) if it was actually "beyond trivial" why hasn't it been done. according to you there's little cost involved and, i'd argue, sizeable benefit to this feature.

and if everyone could realize that IBM's claims indicate that this is a *general* solution and is not specific to ridiculously simple regexps like SSNs or phone numbers then maybe it'll be easier to see that it is absolutely not as trivial as everybody here wants to claim.

really, i'm not trying to defend IBM here, but you realize that the prior art you list at regexlib.com fails *Claim 1* of the actual patent application don't you?

the patent claims that the specific character(s) that breaks the regex is flagged. which the method at regexlib.com (as well as your other examples) does not do.

you recognized that the patent also claims real-time checking, but passed that off as trivial. but if either or both of these differences are really trivial where are all the examples of this being done?

CallerID by WhitePages?
StreamFurious or any number of other streaming programs that can run *in the background*?

and when you travel internaationally and bring your phone for its other functions? ooops...