From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2004-11-19T22:58:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Tales of the Regex (Re: About Regular Expressions)


"James Britt" <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:419CF779.2080806@neurogami.com...

> all substrings in a given set of substrings, irrespective of the order
> of the substrings in either the target string or the set of
ubstrings?  )

Yes you can, but it's going to be uuuuugly and slooooow if you have more
than two sub strings.  A set of one regexp per sub string is likely to be
more efficient:

substrings = %w{foo bar baz}
rxs = substrings.map {|s| Regexp.new(Regexp.escape(s))}

string = "klajsd askdjkahs bar asjdajsd asdbazagdjhagsdh f0dfdfuufoosds"
puts "Got it: #{string}" if rxs.all? {|rx| rx =~ string}

> 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?)

Such a language with the same expressiveness as typical regexps would be
too verbose for me.  But I think I remember someone did something similar
with Ruby.  Can't quite remember who it was or a mail thread subject but I
do believe someone has attempted to do something in that direction.

Kind regards

    robert