From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2004-04-23T20:14:10+09:00
Subject: Re: [ann] regexp-engine-0.8, perl5 + some perl6

Simon Strandgaard [mailto:neoneye@adslhome.dk] humbly wrote:

> I have been thinking about extending it so it can explain in 
> more verbose what a regexp does. See this url for example: 
> http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=383&gro
> up_id=18&atid=152
> 

wow, _that_ is really helpful. The  regex#tree and regex#explain would help
a lot of regex newbies (like me). Your regex package, if complete w all
these goodies, could be a lifesaver for a programmer (docs not needed :-).
Pls keep on enriching your regex module.

> 
> 
> > I hope you can do something like this for your other 
> packages as well 
> > (aeditor eg, -who knows aeditor may just run on a 
> browser!). This way, 
> > people can see your contribs in action before they download just to 
> > test. And since you know your product better, you can 
> display/demo all 
> > the needing testings. And they can thus say "ah, it's working". [I 
> > hope other packagers will have some demo page as well. Is this 
> > possible w Rubyforge or something??]. Hope I wasn't asking too much 
> > :-)
> 
> An editor web frontend, that new. Its sligthly more complex 
> to move a cursor around, and send the position back to a 
> server, rendering and transfer buffer text. It may require 
> either JavaScipt or Java. I rather spend some time on 
> finishing the sub-components: regexp, rubyembed, coverage...  
> Sorry no web frontend this time. I could make some animated 
> gif's, or a whole movie of the editor in action?
> 

Well, I was just shooting for the stars. Your work and that of
ErikVeenstra's webdialog just pop in my mind... just maybe.. it could be
possible..


> However you are on to something, AEditor is too complex to 
> install, because of the dependency on Ncurses. I have long 
> been thinking about making a frontend for Curses which is 
> distributed with Ruby, so that compilation of Ncurses can be 
> avoided. However I plan to make a Fox widget, which can do 
> some nice antialiased 
> rendering and do other fancy graphics stuff.  However regexp 
> has top priority.
> 

yes, you're right there, especially since I also do windows stuff. Anyway,
your aeditor is promising. I'd love to have an editor that is pure 100% ruby
(I'm a text fan btw). Keep aeditor up, too.


> 
> > 
> > I'm testing the sample. And the regexp.tree is cool :-)
> >
>  
> Great. BTW: Do you have ideas to how 'regexp.tree' can be 
> made even cooler ?

well, I also removed the word "error" in "Mismatch error" (sometimes I
prefer "NO match" :-).

Is it possible to point on the tree where the match failed?? For example
(don't worry, I know I'm shooting for the stars again here :-) :


C:\ruby181-12\installer\regexp-engine-0.8\samples>interactive '((ab)*x)'
'ab'

+-Group register=1
  +-Sequence
    +-Repeat greedy{0,-1}
    | +-Group register=2
    |   +-Sequence
    |     +-Literal "a"
    |     +-Literal "b"
    +-Literal "x"

Mismatch Error: regexp does not match string.

C:\ruby181-12\installer\regexp-engine-0.8\samples>interactive '((ab)*x)'
'abx'

+-Group register=1
  +-Sequence
    +-Repeat greedy{0,-1}
    | +-Group register=2
    |   +-Sequence
    |     +-Literal "a"
    |     +-Literal "b"
    +-Literal "x"
<<abx>>
["abx", "abx", "ab"]


It would be nice as for the first case, to display:

C:\ruby181-12\installer\regexp-engine-0.8\samples>interactive '((ab)*x)'
'ab'

+-Group register=1
  +-Sequence
    +-Repeat greedy{0,-1}
    | +-Group register=2
    |   +-Sequence
    |     +-Literal "a"
    |     +-Literal "b"
    +-Literal "x" <=== Match Failed here!

NO Match. regexp /((ab)*x)/ does not match string 'ab'. See tree pls.

> > 
> > btw, a stupid question: how do you run the 
> web_interface.rb? I'm using 
> > windowsxp actually.
> > 
> 
> I run it via 'mod_ruby' through apache. I think it also can 
> be run with FastCGI, but I have never tried it out. I have 
> made a link named 'regexp.rbx' pointing at that file in my 
> www folder. Bommer, I forgot to write these instructions in 
> the top of 'web_interface.rb'.
> 

thanks for this. 'will try if I can run it on webdialog

> 
> botp, Thanks for your reply, It has been helpful to me.
> 
> --
> Simon Strandgaard
> 

kind regards -botp