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Tutorial Part 6
Things you can't do in Perl: (?@()), (?>1), (?Q),
(??w), (??d), ...
Up until now, you've been learning about the same basic patterns
that are available to you in perl 5. Package pat offers some
extensions of this framework, as well as an ability to add your
own patterns.
Suppose you wish to match the word "foo" but not if it occurs inside
single or double quotes. There is a shorthand for this sort of thing
in package pat. You can simply say
Regex r=new Regex("(?Q)foo");
r.search("one 'foo' two \"foo\" three foo.");
System.out.println(r.left()+">>"+r.stringMatched()+"<<"+r.right());
// Prints: One 'foo' two "foo" three >>foo<<.
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When the Q flag is set, package pat acts as if each letter inside
single or double quotes had a value outside the range possible for
a character. Quotes extend from the first occurence of ' or " until
a matching quote that is not preceeded by a backslash is found.
Suppose you want to match on balanced parenthesis? That is, suppose
you want to fish out a function and its arguments from some bit of
C code you're parsing. Package pat allows you to do this in a very
simple and straightforward manner.
Regex r = new Regex("foo(?@())");
r.search("a=7; foo( x=2+4, bar(9) ); output(8);");
System.out.println(r.stringMatched());
// Prints: foo( x=2+4, bar(9) )
// For comparison....
r = new Regex("foo\\(.*\\)");
r.search("a=7; foo( x=2+4, bar(9) ); output(8);");
System.out.println(r.stringMatched());
// Prints: foo( x=2+4, bar(9) ); output(8)
// and...
r = new Regex("foo\\(.*?\\)");
r.search("a=7; foo( x=2+4, bar(9) ); output(8);");
System.out.println(r.stringMatched());
// Prints: foo( x=2+4, bar(9)
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As you can see, of three attempts to match a balanced paranthesis
only the first really did what we wanted. The "(?@())" pattern
element can be used to match on square brackets (for this purpose
it takes the form "(?@[])") and for curly brackets (for this
purpose it takes the form "(?@{})"). If that isn't convenient
enough for you, you can write your own variation of this pattern
element and teach Regex to understand it (see
deriv3.java. If you
want to see another example of how to design your own pattern
element see deriv2.java.).
In Perl you can match an x followed by an a using the pattern
"x(?=a)" but what if you wanted to match on an x, but only if
it was preceeded by an a? You could do it in package pat like
this: "x(?<2)a(?<1)". The element "(?<2)" means go back 2,
and the element "(?<1)" means skip ahead 1.
Regex r = new Regex("x(?<2)a(?>1)");
r.search(" -- ax -- ");
System.out.println(r.stringMatched());
// Prints: x
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Use this pattern element with caution. It works as advertised,
but its sometimes hard to realize exactly what the result of this
will be.
The shorthand "\\w" is convenient, it can be used to match on words in
combination with "+". Thus, "\\w+" will generally allow you to match on
any word -- as long as that word is in English. This pattern would probably
not do what you wanted if it encountered the German word fünf or the
French word français. One solution is to use the pattern element "(??w)".
This acts like "\\w" but matches all unicode characters. Likewise, there
is a pattern element "(??d)" which will match on all unicode digits -- not
just 0-9 like "\\d". To learn more, see
unicode.html.
A final trick: What if you want to swap two words in a bit of text, say
you want to replace every occurence of foo with bar and vice versa? You
can do this with the transformer.
Trans t = new Transformer(true);
t.add("s/foo/bar/");
t.add("s/bar/foo/");
System.out.println( t.replaceAll("Here is foo, here is bar.") );
// Prints: Here is bar, here is foo.
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To understand this better, and to see another example please look
at trans.java.
Well, that's it for now. More tutorials on other details of package
pat will probably be placed here in the future. In any event, now
you know the basics of how to use package pat. Happy Programming!
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