From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2004-11-19T05:19:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Tales of the Regex (Re: About Regular Expressions)

On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 04:26:08AM +0900, James Britt wrote:
> One a side note, I wonder what it would take to write a domain language, 
> parable by Ruby, that let one write REs in plain-ish English?  Maybe 
> take some of the mystery out of regular expressions for most of the 
> common cases.  (Or would that just get people dependent on too much 
> hand-holding?)
> 

Take a look at Florian Gro�' Regexp::English.
Short example: http://www.rubycookbook.org/cookbook/view/ReadableRegularExpressions

Also Simon Strandgaard's re might interest you; you can do things like

>> puts /ab|cd(?=x)|xxx/.tree
+-Alternation
  +-Sequence
  | +-Inside set="a"
  | +-Inside set="b"
  +-Sequence
  | +-Inside set="c"
  | +-Inside set="d"
  | +-Lookahead positive
  |   +-Inside set="x"
  +-Sequence
    +-Inside set="x"
    +-Inside set="x"
    +-Inside set="x"
=> nil

-- 
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