Regexp::Assemble(3pm) User Contributed Perl DocumentationRegexp::Assemble(3pm)
NAME
Regexp::Assemble - Assemble multiple Regular Expressions into a single
RE
SYNOPSIS
use Regexp::Assemble;
my $ra = Regexp::Assemble->new;
$ra->add( 'ab+c' );
$ra->add( 'ab+-' );
$ra->add( 'a\w\d+' );
$ra->add( 'a\d+' );
print $ra->re; # prints a(?:\w?\d+|b+[-c])
DESCRIPTION
Regexp::Assemble takes an arbitrary number of regular expressions and
assembles them into a single regular expression (or RE) that matches
all that the individual REs match.
As a result, instead of having a large list of expressions to loop
over, a target string only needs to be tested against one expression.
This is interesting when you have several thousand patterns to deal
with. Serious effort is made to produce the smallest pattern possible.
It is also possible to track the original patterns, so that you can
determine which, among the source patterns that form the assembled
pattern, was the one that caused the match to occur.
You should realise that large numbers of alternations are processed in
perl's regular expression engine in O(n) time, not O(1). If you are
still having performance problems, you should look at using a trie.
Note that Perl's own regular expression engine will implement trie
optimisations in perl 5.10 (they are already available in perl 5.9.3 if
you want to try them out). "Regexp::Assemble" will do the right thing
when it knows it's running on a trie'd perl. (At least in some version
after this one).
Some more examples of usage appear in the accompanying README. If that
file is not easy to access locally, you can find it on a web repository
such as <http://search.cpan.org/dist/Regexp-Assemble/README> or
<http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/htdocs/Regexp-Assemble/README.html>.
See also "LIMITATIONS".
Methods
add(LIST)
Takes a string, breaks it apart into a set of tokens (respecting meta
characters) and inserts the resulting list into the "R::A" object. It
uses a naive regular expression to lex the string that may be fooled
complex expressions (specifically, it will fail to lex nested
parenthetical expressions such as "ab(cd(ef)?gh)ij" correctly). If this
is the case, the end of the string will not be tokenised correctly and
returned as one long string.
On the one hand, this may indicate that the patterns you are trying to
feed the "R::A" object are too complex. Simpler patterns might allow
the algorithm to work more effectively and perform more reductions in
the resulting pattern.
On the other hand, you can supply your own pattern to perform the
lexing if you need. The test suite contains an example of a lexer
pattern that will match one level of nested parentheses.
Note that there is an internal optimisation that will bypass a much of
the lexing process. If a string contains no "\" (backslash), "[" (open
square bracket), "(" (open paren), "?" (question mark), "+" (plus), "*"
(star) or "{" (open curly), a character split will be performed
directly.
A list of strings may be supplied, thus you can pass it a file handle
of a file opened for reading:
$re->add( '\d+-\d+-\d+-\d+\.example\.com' );
$re->add( <IN> );
If the file is very large, it may be more efficient to use a "while"
loop, to read the file line-by-line:
$re->add($_) while <IN>;
The "add" method will chomp the lines automatically. If you do not want
this to occur (you want to keep the record separator), then disable
"chomp"ing.
$re->chomp(0);
$re->add($_) while <IN>;
This method is chainable.
add_file(FILENAME [...])
Takes a list of file names. Each file is opened and read line by line.
Each line is added to the assembly.
$r->add_file( 'file.1', 'file.2' );
If a file cannot be opened, the method will croak. If you cannot afford
to let this happen then you should wrap the call in a "eval" block.
Chomping happens automatically unless you the chomp(0) method to
disable it. By default, input lines are read according to the value of
the "input_record_separator" attribute (if defined), and will otherwise
fall back to the current setting of the system $/ variable. The record
separator may also be specified on each call to "add_file". Internally,
the routine "local"ises the value of $/ to whatever is required, for
the duration of the call.
An alternate calling mechanism using a hash reference is available.
The recognised keys are:
file
Reference to a list of file names, or the name of a single file.
$r->add_file({file => ['file.1', 'file.2', 'file.3']});
$r->add_file({file => 'file.n'});
input_record_separator
If present, indicates what constitutes a line
$r->add_file({file => 'data.txt', input_record_separator => ':' });
rs An alias for input_record_separator (mnemonic: same as the English
variable names).
$r->add_file( {
file => [ 'pattern.txt', 'more.txt' ],
input_record_separator => "\r\n",
});
clone()
Clones the contents of a Regexp::Assemble object and creates a new
object (in other words it performs a deep copy).
If the Storable module is installed, its dclone method will be used,
otherwise the cloning will be performed using a pure perl approach.
You can use this method to take a snapshot of the patterns that have
been added so far to an object, and generate an assembly from the
clone. Additional patterns may to be added to the original object
afterwards.
my $re = $main->clone->re();
$main->add( 'another-pattern-\\d+' );
insert(LIST)
Takes a list of tokens representing a regular expression and stores
them in the object. Note: you should not pass it a bare regular
expression, such as "ab+c?d*e". You must pass it as a list of tokens,
e.g. "('a', 'b+', 'c?', 'd*', 'e')".
This method is chainable, e.g.:
my $ra = Regexp::Assemble->new
->insert( qw[ a b+ c? d* e ] )
->insert( qw[ a c+ d+ e* f ] );
Lexing complex patterns with metacharacters and so on can consume a
significant proportion of the overall time to build an assembly. If
you have the information available in a tokenised form, calling
"insert" directly can be a big win.
lexstr
Use the "lexstr" method if you are curious to see how a pattern gets
tokenised. It takes a scalar on input, representing a pattern, and
returns a reference to an array, containing the tokenised pattern. You
can recover the original pattern by performing a "join":
my @token = $re->lexstr($pattern);
my $new_pattern = join( '', @token );
If the original pattern contains unnecessary backslashes, or "\x4b"
escapes, or quotemeta escapes ("\Q"..."\E") the resulting pattern may
not be identical.
Call "lexstr" does not add the pattern to the object, it is merely for
exploratory purposes. It will, however, update various statistical
counters.
pre_filter(CODE)
Allows you to install a callback to check that the pattern being loaded
contains valid input. It receives the pattern as a whole to be added,
before it been tokenised by the lexer. It may to return 0 or "undef" to
indicate that the pattern should not be added, any true value indicates
that the contents are fine.
A filter to strip out trailing comments (marked by #):
$re->pre_filter( sub { $_[0] =~ s/\s*#.*$//; 1 } );
A filter to ignore blank lines:
$re->pre_filter( sub { length(shift) } );
If you want to remove the filter, pass "undef" as a parameter.
$ra->pre_filter(undef);
This method is chainable.
filter(CODE)
Allows you to install a callback to check that the pattern being loaded
contains valid input. It receives a list on input, after it has been
tokenised by the lexer. It may to return 0 or undef to indicate that
the pattern should not be added, any true value indicates that the
contents are fine.
If you know that all patterns you expect to assemble contain a
restricted set of of tokens (e.g. no spaces), you could do the
following:
$ra->filter(sub { not grep { / / } @_ });
or
sub only_spaces_and_digits {
not grep { ![\d ] } @_
}
$ra->filter( \&only_spaces_and_digits );
These two examples will silently ignore faulty patterns, If you want
the user to be made aware of the problem you should raise an error (via
"warn" or "die"), log an error message, whatever is best. If you want
to remove a filter, pass "undef" as a parameter.
$ra->filter(undef);
This method is chainable.
as_string
Assemble the expression and return it as a string. You may want to do
this if you are writing the pattern to a file. The following arguments
can be passed to control the aspect of the resulting pattern:
indent, the number of spaces used to indent nested grouping of a
pattern. Use this to produce a pretty-printed pattern (for some
definition of "pretty"). The resulting output is rather verbose. The
reason is to ensure that the metacharacters "(?:" and ")" always occur
on otherwise empty lines. This allows you grep the result for an even
more synthetic view of the pattern:
egrep -v '^ *[()]' <regexp.file>
The result of the above is quite readable. Remember to backslash the
spaces appearing in your own patterns if you wish to use an indented
pattern in an "m/.../x" construct. Indenting is ignored if tracking is
enabled.
The indent argument takes precedence over the "indent" method/attribute
of the object.
Calling this method will drain the internal data structure. Large
numbers of patterns can eat a significant amount of memory, and this
lets perl recover the memory used for other purposes.
If you want to reduce the pattern and continue to add new patterns,
clone the object and reduce the clone, leaving the original object
intact.
re
Assembles the pattern and return it as a compiled RE, using the "qr//"
operator.
As with "as_string", calling this method will reset the internal data
structures to free the memory used in assembling the RE.
The indent attribute, documented in the "as_string" method, can be used
here (it will be ignored if tracking is enabled).
With method chaining, it is possible to produce a RE without having a
temporary "Regexp::Assemble" object lying around, e.g.:
my $re = Regexp::Assemble->new
->add( q[ab+cd+e] )
->add( q[ac\\d+e] )
->add( q[c\\d+e] )
->re;
The $re variable now contains a Regexp object that can be used
directly:
while( <> ) {
/$re/ and print "Something in [$_] matched\n";
)
The "re" method is called when the object is used in string context
(hence, within an "m//" operator), so by and large you do not even need
to save the RE in a separate variable. The following will work as
expected:
my $re = Regexp::Assemble->new->add( qw[ fee fie foe fum ] );
while( <IN> ) {
if( /($re)/ ) {
print "Here be giants: $1\n";
}
}
This approach does not work with tracked patterns. The "match" and
"matched" methods must be used instead, see below.
match(SCALAR)
The following information applies to Perl 5.8 and below. See the
section that follows for information on Perl 5.10.
If pattern tracking is in use, you must "use re 'eval'" in order to
make things work correctly. At a minimum, this will make your code look
like this:
my $did_match = do { use re 'eval'; $target =~ /$ra/ }
if( $did_match ) {
print "matched ", $ra->matched, "\n";
}
(The main reason is that the $^R variable is currently broken and an
ugly workaround that runs some Perl code during the match is required,
in order to simulate what $^R should be doing. See Perl bug #32840 for
more information if you are curious. The README also contains more
information). This bug has been fixed in 5.10.
The important thing to note is that with "use re 'eval'", THERE ARE
SECURITY IMPLICATIONS WHICH YOU IGNORE AT YOUR PERIL. The problem is
this: if you do not have strict control over the patterns being fed to
"Regexp::Assemble" when tracking is enabled, and someone slips you a
pattern such as "/^(?{system 'rm -rf /'})/" and you attempt to match a
string against the resulting pattern, you will know Fear and Loathing.
What is more, the $^R workaround means that that tracking does not work
if you perform a bare "/$re/" pattern match as shown above. You have to
instead call the "match" method, in order to supply the necessary
context to take care of the tracking housekeeping details.
if( defined( my $match = $ra->match($_)) ) {
print " $_ matched by $match\n";
}
In the case of a successful match, the original matched pattern is
returned directly. The matched pattern will also be available through
the "matched" method.
(Except that the above is not true for 5.6.0: the "match" method
returns true or undef, and the "matched" method always returns undef).
If you are capturing parts of the pattern e.g. "foo(bar)rat" you will
want to get at the captures. See the "mbegin", "mend", "mvar" and
"capture" methods. If you are not using captures then you may safely
ignore this section.
In 5.10, since the bug concerning $^R has been resolved, there is no
need to use "re 'eval'" and the assembled pattern does not require any
Perl code to be executed during the match.
new()
Creates a new "Regexp::Assemble" object. The following optional
key/value parameters may be employed. All keys have a corresponding
method that can be used to change the behaviour later on. As a general
rule, especially if you're just starting out, you don't have to bother
with any of these.
anchor_*, a family of optional attributes that allow anchors ("^",
"\b", "\Z"...) to be added to the resulting pattern.
flags, sets the "imsx" flags to add to the assembled regular
expression. Warning: no error checking is done, you should ensure that
the flags you pass are understood by the version of Perl you are using.
modifiers exists as an alias, for users familiar with Regexp::List.
chomp, controls whether the pattern should be chomped before being
lexed. Handy if you are reading patterns from a file. By default,
"chomp"ing is performed (this behaviour changed as of version 0.24,
prior versions did not chomp automatically). See also the "file"
attribute and the "add_file" method.
file, slurp the contents of the specified file and add them to the
assembly. Multiple files may be processed by using a list.
my $r = Regexp::Assemble->new(file => 're.list');
my $r = Regexp::Assemble->new(file => ['re.1', 're.2']);
If you really don't want chomping to occur, you will have to set the
"chomp" attribute to 0 (zero). You may also want to look at the
"input_record_separator" attribute, as well.
input_record_separator, controls what constitutes a record separator
when using the "file" attribute or the "add_file" method. May be
abbreviated to rs. See the $/ variable in perlvar.
lookahead, controls whether the pattern should contain zero-width
lookahead assertions (For instance: (?=[abc])(?:bob|alice|charles).
This is not activated by default, because in many circumstances the
cost of processing the assertion itself outweighs the benefit of its
faculty for short-circuiting a match that will fail. This is sensitive
to the probability of a match succeeding, so if you're worried about
performance you'll have to benchmark a sample population of targets to
see which way the benefits lie.
track, controls whether you want know which of the initial patterns was
the one that matched. See the "matched" method for more details. Note
for version 5.8 of Perl and below, in this mode of operation YOU SHOULD
BE AWARE OF THE SECURITY IMPLICATIONS that this entails. Perl 5.10 does
not suffer from any such restriction.
indent, the number of spaces used to indent nested grouping of a
pattern. Use this to produce a pretty-printed pattern. See the
"as_string" method for a more detailed explanation.
pre_filter, allows you to add a callback to enable sanity checks on the
pattern being loaded. This callback is triggered before the pattern is
split apart by the lexer. In other words, it operates on the entire
pattern. If you are loading patterns from a file, this would be an
appropriate place to remove comments.
filter, allows you to add a callback to enable sanity checks on the
pattern being loaded. This callback is triggered after the pattern has
been split apart by the lexer.
unroll_plus, controls whether to unroll, for example, "x+" into "x",
"x*", which may allow additional reductions in the resulting assembled
pattern.
reduce, controls whether tail reduction occurs or not. If set, patterns
like "a(?:bc+d|ec+d)" will be reduced to "a[be]c+d". That is, the end
of the pattern in each part of the b... and d... alternations is
identical, and hence is hoisted out of the alternation and placed after
it. On by default. Turn it off if you're really pressed for short
assembly times.
lex, specifies the pattern used to lex the input lines into tokens. You
could replace the default pattern by a more sophisticated version that
matches arbitrarily nested parentheses, for example.
debug, controls whether copious amounts of output is produced during
the loading stage or the reducing stage of assembly.
my $ra = Regexp::Assemble->new;
my $rb = Regexp::Assemble->new( chomp => 1, debug => 3 );
mutable, controls whether new patterns can be added to the object after
the assembled pattern is generated. DEPRECATED.
This method/attribute will be removed in a future release. It doesn't
really serve any purpose, and may be more effectively replaced by
cloning an existing "Regexp::Assemble" object and spinning out a
pattern from that instead.
source()
When using tracked mode, after a successful match is made, returns the
original source pattern that caused the match. In Perl 5.10, the $^R
variable can be used to as an index to fetch the correct pattern from
the object.
If no successful match has been performed, or the object is not in
tracked mode, this method returns "undef".
my $r = Regexp::Assemble->new->track(1)->add(qw(foo? bar{2} [Rr]at));
for my $w (qw(this food is rather barren)) {
if ($w =~ /$r/) {
print "$w matched by ", $r->source($^R), $/;
}
else {
print "$w no match\n";
}
}
mbegin()
This method returns a copy of "@-" at the moment of the last match. You
should ordinarily not need to bother with this, "mvar" should be able
to supply all your needs.
mend()
This method returns a copy of "@+" at the moment of the last match.
mvar(NUMBER)
The "mvar" method returns the captures of the last match. mvar(1)
corresponds to $1, mvar(2) to $2, and so on. mvar(0) happens to return
the target string matched, as a byproduct of walking down the "@-" and
"@+" arrays after the match.
If called without a parameter, "mvar" will return a reference to an
array containing all captures.
capture
The "capture" method returns the the captures of the last match as an
array. Unlink "mvar", this method does not include the matched string.
It is equivalent to getting an array back that contains "$1, $2, $3,
...".
If no captures were found in the match, an empty array is returned,
rather than "undef". You are therefore guaranteed to be able to use
"for my $c ($re->capture) { ..." without have to check whether
anything was captured.
matched()
If pattern tracking has been set, via the "track" attribute, or through
the "track" method, this method will return the original pattern of the
last successful match. Returns undef match has yet been performed, or
tracking has not been enabled.
See below in the NOTES section for additional subtleties of which you
should be aware of when tracking patterns.
Note that this method is not available in 5.6.0, due to limitations in
the implementation of "(?{...})" at the time.
Statistics/Reporting routines
stats_add
Returns the number of patterns added to the assembly (whether by "add"
or "insert"). Duplicate patterns are not included in this total.
stats_dup
Returns the number of duplicate patterns added to the assembly. If
non-zero, this may be a sign that something is wrong with your data (or
at the least, some needless redundancy). This may occur when you have
two patterns (for instance, "a\-b" and "a-b") which map to the same
result.
stats_raw()
Returns the raw number of bytes in the patterns added to the assembly.
This includes both original and duplicate patterns. For instance,
adding the two patterns "ab" and "ab" will count as 4 bytes.
stats_cooked()
Return the true number of bytes added to the assembly. This will not
include duplicate patterns. Furthermore, it may differ from the raw
bytes due to quotemeta treatment. For instance, "abc\,def" will count
as 7 (not 8) bytes, because "\," will be stored as ",". Also, "\Qa.b\E"
is 7 bytes long, however, after the quotemeta directives are processed,
"a\.b" will be stored, for a total of 4 bytes.
stats_length()
Returns the length of the resulting assembled expression. Until
"as_string" or "re" have been called, the length will be 0 (since the
assembly will have not yet been performed). The length includes only
the pattern, not the additional ("(?-xism...") fluff added by the
compilation.
dup_warn(NUMBER|CODEREF)
Turns warnings about duplicate patterns on or off. By default, no
warnings are emitted. If the method is called with no parameters, or a
true parameter, the object will carp about patterns it has already
seen. To turn off the warnings, use 0 as a parameter.
$r->dup_warn();
The method may also be passed a code block. In this case the code will
be executed and it will receive a reference to the object in question,
and the lexed pattern.
$r->dup_warn(
sub {
my $self = shift;
print $self->stats_add, " patterns added at line $.\n",
join( '', @_ ), " added previously\n";
}
)
Anchor routines
Suppose you wish to assemble a series of patterns that all begin with
"^" and end with "$" (anchor pattern to the beginning and end of
line). Rather than add the anchors to each and every pattern (and
possibly forget to do so when a new entry is added), you may specify
the anchors in the object, and they will appear in the resulting
pattern, and you no longer need to (or should) put them in your source
patterns. For example, the two following snippets will produce
identical patterns:
$r->add(qw(^this ^that ^them))->as_string;
$r->add(qw(this that them))->anchor_line_begin->as_string;
# both techniques will produce ^th(?:at|em|is)
All anchors are possible word ("\b") boundaries, line boundaries ("^"
and "$") and string boundaries ("\A" and "\Z" (or "\z" if you
absolutely need it)).
The shortcut "anchor_mumble" implies both "anchor_mumble_begin"
"anchor_mumble_end" is also available. If different anchors are
specified the most specific anchor wins. For instance, if both
"anchor_word_begin" and "anchor_line_begin" are specified,
"anchor_word_begin" takes precedence.
All the anchor methods are chainable.
anchor_word_begin
The resulting pattern will be prefixed with a "\b" word boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->add('pre')->anchor_word_begin->as_string;
# produces '\bpre'
anchor_word_end
The resulting pattern will be suffixed with a "\b" word boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->add(qw(ing tion))
->anchor_word_end
->as_string; # produces '(?:tion|ing)\b'
anchor_word
The resulting pattern will be have "\b" word boundary assertions at the
beginning and end of the pattern when the value is true. Set to 0 to
disable.
$r->add(qw(cat carrot)
->anchor_word(1)
->as_string; # produces '\bca(?:rro)t\b'
anchor_line_begin
The resulting pattern will be prefixed with a "^" line boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->anchor_line_begin;
# or
$r->anchor_line_begin(1);
anchor_line_end
The resulting pattern will be suffixed with a "$" line boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
# turn it off
$r->anchor_line_end(0);
anchor_line
The resulting pattern will be have the "^" and "$" line boundary
assertions at the beginning and end of the pattern, respectively, when
the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->add(qw(cat carrot)
->anchor_line
->as_string; # produces '^ca(?:rro)t$'
anchor_string_begin
The resulting pattern will be prefixed with a "\A" string boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->anchor_string_begin(1);
anchor_string_end
The resulting pattern will be suffixed with a "\Z" string boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
# disable the string boundary end anchor
$r->anchor_string_end(0);
anchor_string_end_absolute
The resulting pattern will be suffixed with a "\z" string boundary
assertion when the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
# disable the string boundary absolute end anchor
$r->anchor_string_end_absolute(0);
If you don't understand the difference between "\Z" and "\z", the
former will probably do what you want.
anchor_string
The resulting pattern will be have the "\A" and "\Z" string boundary
assertions at the beginning and end of the pattern, respectively, when
the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->add(qw(cat carrot)
->anchor_string
->as_string; # produces '\Aca(?:rro)t\Z'
anchor_string_absolute
The resulting pattern will be have the "\A" and "\z" string boundary
assertions at the beginning and end of the pattern, respectively, when
the value is true. Set to 0 to disable.
$r->add(qw(cat carrot)
->anchor_string_absolute
->as_string; # produces '\Aca(?:rro)t\z'
debug(NUMBER)
Turns debugging on or off. Statements are printed to the currently
selected file handle (STDOUT by default). If you are already using
this handle, you will have to arrange to select an output handle to a
file of your own choosing, before call the "add", "as_string" or "re")
functions, otherwise it will scribble all over your carefully formatted
output.
• Off. Turns off all debugging output.
• 1
Add. Trace the addition of patterns.
• 2
Reduce. Trace the process of reduction and assembly.
• 4
Lex. Trace the lexing of the input patterns into its constituent
tokens.
• 8
Time. Print to STDOUT the time taken to load all the patterns. This
is nothing more than the difference between the time the object was
instantiated and the time reduction was initiated.
# load=<num>
Any lengthy computation performed in the client code will be
reflected in this value. Another line will be printed after
reduction is complete.
# reduce=<num>
The above output lines will be changed to "load-epoch" and
"reduce-epoch" if the internal state of the object is corrupted and
the initial timestamp is lost.
The code attempts to load Time::HiRes in order to report fractional
seconds. If this is not successful, the elapsed time is displayed
in whole seconds.
Values can be added (or or'ed together) to trace everything
$r->debug(7)->add( '\\d+abc' );
Calling "debug" with no arguments turns debugging off.
dump()
Produces a synthetic view of the internal data structure. How to
interpret the results is left as an exercise to the reader.
print $r->dump;
chomp(0|1)
Turns chomping on or off.
IMPORTANT: As of version 0.24, chomping is now on by default as it
makes "add_file" Just Work. The only time you may run into trouble is
with "add("\\$/")". So don't do that, or else explicitly turn off
chomping.
To avoid incorporating (spurious) record separators (such as "\n" on
Unix) when reading from a file, "add()" "chomp"s its input. If you
don't want this to happen, call "chomp" with a false value.
$re->chomp(0); # really want the record separators
$re->add(<DATA>);
fold_meta_pairs(NUMBER)
Determines whether "\s", "\S" and "\w", "\W" and "\d", "\D" are folded
into a "." (dot). Folding happens by default (for reasons of backwards
compatibility, even though it is wrong when the "/s" expression
modifier is active).
Call this method with a false value to prevent this behaviour (which is
only a problem when dealing with "\n" if the "/s" expression modifier
is also set).
$re->add( '\\w', '\\W' );
my $clone = $re->clone;
$clone->fold_meta_pairs(0);
print $clone->as_string; # prints '.'
print $re->as_string; # print '[\W\w]'
indent(NUMBER)
Sets the level of indent for pretty-printing nested groups within a
pattern. See the "as_string" method for more details. When called
without a parameter, no indenting is performed.
$re->indent( 4 );
print $re->as_string;
lookahead(0|1)
Turns on zero-width lookahead assertions. This is usually beneficial
when you expect that the pattern will usually fail. If you expect that
the pattern will usually match you will probably be worse off.
flags(STRING)
Sets the flags that govern how the pattern behaves (for versions of
Perl up to 5.9 or so, these are "imsx"). By default no flags are
enabled.
modifiers(STRING)
An alias of the "flags" method, for users familiar with "Regexp::List".
track(0|1)
Turns tracking on or off. When this attribute is enabled, additional
housekeeping information is inserted into the assembled expression
using "({...}" embedded code constructs. This provides the necessary
information to determine which, of the original patterns added, was the
one that caused the match.
$re->track( 1 );
if( $target =~ /$re/ ) {
print "$target matched by ", $re->matched, "\n";
}
Note that when this functionality is enabled, no reduction is performed
and no character classes are generated. In other words, "brag|tag" is
not reduced down to "(?:br|t)ag" and "dig|dim" is not reduced to
"di[gm]".
unroll_plus(0|1)
Turns the unrolling of plus metacharacters on or off. When a pattern is
broken up, "a+" becomes "a", "a*" (and "b+?" becomes "b", "b*?". This
may allow the freed "a" to assemble with other patterns. Not enabled by
default.
lex(SCALAR)
Change the pattern used to break a string apart into tokens. You can
examine the "eg/naive" script as a starting point.
reduce(0|1)
Turns pattern reduction on or off. A reduced pattern may be
considerably shorter than an unreduced pattern. Consider
"/sl(?:ip|op|ap)/" versus "/sl[aio]p/". An unreduced pattern will be
very similar to those produced by "Regexp::Optimizer". Reduction is on
by default. Turning it off speeds assembly (but assembly is pretty fast
-- it's the breaking up of the initial patterns in the lexing stage
that can consume a non-negligible amount of time).
mutable(0|1)
This method has been marked as DEPRECATED. It will be removed in a
future release. See the "clone" method for a technique to replace its
functionality.
reset()
Empties out the patterns that have been "add"ed or "insert"-ed into the
object. Does not modify the state of controller attributes such as
"debug", "lex", "reduce" and the like.
Default_Lexer
Warning: the "Default_Lexer" function is a class method, not an object
method. It is a fatal error to call it as an object method.
The "Default_Lexer" method lets you replace the default pattern used
for all subsequently created "Regexp::Assemble" objects. It will not
have any effect on existing objects. (It is also possible to override
the lexer pattern used on a per-object basis).
The parameter should be an ordinary scalar, not a compiled pattern. If
the pattern fails to match all parts of the string, the missing parts
will be returned as single chunks. Therefore the following pattern is
legal (albeit rather cork-brained):
Regexp::Assemble::Default_Lexer( '\\d' );
The above pattern will split up input strings digit by digit, and all
non-digit characters as single chunks.
DIAGNOSTICS
"Cannot pass a C<refname> to Default_Lexer"
You tried to replace the default lexer pattern with an object instead
of a scalar. Solution: You probably tried to call
"$obj->Default_Lexer". Call the qualified class method instead
"Regexp::Assemble::Default_Lexer".
"filter method not passed a coderef"
"pre_filter method not passed a coderef"
A reference to a subroutine (anonymous or otherwise) was expected.
Solution: read the documentation for the "filter" method.
"duplicate pattern added: /.../"
The "dup_warn" attribute is active, and a duplicate pattern was added
(well duh!). Solution: clean your data.
"cannot open [file] for input: [reason]"
The "add_file" method was unable to open the specified file for
whatever reason. Solution: make sure the file exists and the script has
the required privileges to read it.
NOTES
This module has been tested successfully with a range of versions of
perl, from 5.005_03 to 5.9.3. Use of 5.6.0 is not recommended.
The expressions produced by this module can be used with the PCRE
library.
Remember to "double up" your backslashes if the patterns are hard-coded
as constants in your program. That is, you should literally
"add('a\\d+b')" rather than "add('a\d+b')". It usually will work either
way, but it's good practice to do so.
Where possible, supply the simplest tokens possible. Don't add
"X(?-\d+){2})Y" when "X-\d+-\d+Y" will do. The reason is that if you
also add "X\d+Z" the resulting assembly changes dramatically:
"X(?:(?:-\d+){2}Y|-\d+Z)" versus "X-\d+(?:-\d+Y|Z)". Since R::A doesn't
perform enough analysis, it won't "unroll" the "{2}" quantifier, and
will fail to notice the divergence after the first "-d\d+".
Furthermore, when the string 'X-123000P' is matched against the first
assembly, the regexp engine will have to backtrack over each
alternation (the one that ends in Y and the one that ends in Z) before
determining that there is no match. No such backtracking occurs in the
second pattern: as soon as the engine encounters the 'P' in the target
string, neither of the alternations at that point ("-\d+Y" or "Z")
could succeed and so the match fails.
"Regexp::Assemble" does, however, know how to build character classes.
Given "a-b", "axb" and "a\db", it will assemble these into "a[-\dx]b".
When "-" (dash) appears as a candidate for a character class it will be
the first character in the class. When "^" (circumflex) appears as a
candidate for a character class it will be the last character in the
class.
It also knows about meta-characters than can "absorb" regular
characters. For instance, given "X\d" and "X5", it knows that 5 can be
represented by "\d" and so the assembly is just "X\d". The "absorbent"
meta-characters it deals with are ".", "\d", "\s" and "\W" and their
complements. It will replace "\d"/"\D", "\s"/"\S" and "\w"/"\W" by "."
(dot), and it will drop "\d" if "\w" is also present (as will "\D" in
the presence of "\W").
"Regexp::Assemble" deals correctly with "quotemeta"'s propensity to
backslash many characters that have no need to be. Backslashes on non-
metacharacters will be removed. Similarly, in character classes, a
number of characters lose their magic and so no longer need to be
backslashed within a character class. Two common examples are "."
(dot) and "$". Such characters will lose their backslash.
At the same time, it will also process "\Q...\E" sequences. When such a
sequence is encountered, the inner section is extracted and "quotemeta"
is applied to the section. The resulting quoted text is then used in
place of the original unquoted text, and the "\Q" and "\E"
metacharacters are thrown away. Similar processing occurs with the
"\U...\E" and "\L...\E" sequences. This may have surprising effects
when using a dispatch table. In this case, you will need to know
exactly what the module makes of your input. Use the "lexstr" method to
find out what's going on:
$pattern = join( '', @{$re->lexstr($pattern)} );
If all the digits 0..9 appear in a character class, "Regexp::Assemble"
will replace them by "\d". I'd do it for letters as well, but thinking
about accented characters and other glyphs hurts my head.
In an alternation, the longest paths are chosen first (for example,
"horse|bird|dog"). When two paths have the same length, the path with
the most subpaths will appear first. This aims to put the "busiest"
paths to the front of the alternation. For example, the list "bad",
"bit", "few", "fig" and "fun" will produce the pattern
"(?:f(?:ew|ig|un)|b(?:ad|it))". See eg/tld for a real-world example of
how alternations are sorted. Once you have looked at that, everything
should be crystal clear.
When tracking is in use, no reduction is performed. nor are character
classes formed. The reason is that it is too difficult to determine the
original pattern afterwards. Consider the two patterns "pale" and
"palm". These should be reduced to "pal[em]". The final character
matches one of two possibilities. To resolve whether it matched an 'e'
or 'm' would require keeping track of the fact that the pattern
finished up in a character class, which would the require a whole lot
more work to figure out which character of the class matched. Without
character classes it becomes much easier. Instead, "pal(?:e|m)" is
produced, which lets us find out more simply where we ended up.
Similarly, "dogfood" and "seafood" should form "(?:dog|sea)food". When
the pattern is being assembled, the tracking decision needs to be made
at the end of the grouping, but the tail of the pattern has not yet
been visited. Deferring things to make this work correctly is a vast
hassle. In this case, the pattern becomes merely "(?:dogfood|seafood".
Tracked patterns will therefore be bulkier than simple patterns.
There is an open bug on this issue:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=32840>
If this bug is ever resolved, tracking would become much easier to deal
with (none of the "match" hassle would be required - you could just
match like a regular RE and it would Just Work).
SEE ALSO
perlre
General information about Perl's regular expressions.
re Specific information about "use re 'eval'".
Regex::PreSuf
"Regex::PreSuf" takes a string and chops it itself into tokens of
length 1. Since it can't deal with tokens of more than one
character, it can't deal with meta-characters and thus no regular
expressions. Which is the main reason why I wrote this module.
Regexp::Optimizer
"Regexp::Optimizer" produces regular expressions that are similar
to those produced by R::A with reductions switched off. It's
biggest drawback is that it is exponentially slower than
Regexp::Assemble on very large sets of patterns.
Regexp::Parser
Fine grained analysis of regular expressions.
Regexp::Trie
Funnily enough, this was my working name for "Regexp::Assemble"
during its development. I changed the name because I thought it was
too obscure. Anyway, "Regexp::Trie" does much the same as
"Regexp::Optimizer" and "Regexp::Assemble" except that it runs much
faster (according to the author). It does not recognise meta
characters (that is, 'a+b' is interpreted as 'a\+b').
Text::Trie
"Text::Trie" is well worth investigating. Tries can outperform very
bushy (read: many alternations) patterns.
Tree::Trie
"Tree::Trie" is another module that builds tries. The algorithm
that "Regexp::Assemble" uses appears to be quite similar to the
algorithm described therein, except that "R::A" solves its end-
marker problem without having to rewrite the leaves.
See Also
For alternatives to this module, consider one of:
o Data::Munge
o OnSearch::Regex
o Regex::PreSuf
LIMITATIONS
Some mildly complex cases are not handled well. See
examples/failure.01.pl and
<https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=104897>.
See also <https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=106480> for a
discussion of some of the issues arising with the use of a huge number
of alterations. Thanx to Slaven Rezic for the details of trie 'v' non-
trie operations within Perl which influence regexp handling of
alternations.
<Regexp::Assemble> does not attempt to find common substrings. For
instance, it will not collapse "/cabababc/" down to "/c(?:ab){3}c/".
If there's a module out there that performs this sort of string
analysis I'd like to know about it. But keep in mind that the
algorithms that do this are very expensive: quadratic or worse.
"Regexp::Assemble" does not interpret meta-character modifiers. For
instance, if the following two patterns are given: "X\d" and "X\d+", it
will not determine that "\d" can be matched by "\d+". Instead, it will
produce "X(?:\d|\d+)". Along a similar line of reasoning, it will not
determine that "Z" and "Z\d+" is equivalent to "Z\d*" (It will produce
"Z(?:\d+)?" instead).
You cannot remove a pattern that has been added to an object. You'll
just have to start over again. Adding a pattern is difficult enough,
I'd need a solid argument to convince me to add a "remove" method. If
you need to do this you should read the documentation for the "clone"
method.
"Regexp::Assemble" does not (yet)? employ the "(?>...)" construct.
The module does not produce POSIX-style regular expressions. This would
be quite easy to add, if there was a demand for it.
BUGS
Patterns that generate look-ahead assertions sometimes produce
incorrect patterns in certain obscure corner cases. If you suspect that
this is occurring in your pattern, disable lookaheads.
Tracking doesn't really work at all with 5.6.0. It works better in
subsequent 5.6 releases. For maximum reliability, the use of a 5.8
release is strongly recommended. Tracking barely works with 5.005_04.
Of note, using "\d"-style meta-characters invariably causes panics.
Tracking really comes into its own in Perl 5.10.
If you feed "Regexp::Assemble" patterns with nested parentheses, there
is a chance that the resulting pattern will be uncompilable due to
mismatched parentheses (not enough closing parentheses). This is
normal, so long as the default lexer pattern is used. If you want to
find out which pattern among a list of 3000 patterns are to blame
(speaking from experience here), the eg/debugging script offers a
strategy for pinpointing the pattern at fault. While you may not be
able to use the script directly, the general approach is easy to
implement.
The algorithm used to assemble the regular expressions makes extensive
use of mutually-recursive functions (that is, A calls B, B calls A,
...) For deeply similar expressions, it may be possible to provoke
"Deep recursion" warnings.
The module has been tested extensively, and has an extensive test suite
(that achieves close to 100% statement coverage), but you never know...
A bug may manifest itself in two ways: creating a pattern that cannot
be compiled, such as "a\(bc)", or a pattern that compiles correctly but
that either matches things it shouldn't, or doesn't match things it
should. It is assumed that Such problems will occur when the reduction
algorithm encounters some sort of edge case. A temporary work-around is
to disable reductions:
my $pattern = $assembler->reduce(0)->re;
A discussion about implementation details and where bugs might lurk
appears in the README file. If this file is not available locally, you
should be able to find a copy on the Web at your nearest CPAN mirror.
Seriously, though, a number of people have been using this module to
create expressions anywhere from 140Kb to 600Kb in size, and it seems
to be working according to spec. Thus, I don't think there are any
serious bugs remaining.
If you are feeling brave, extensive debugging traces are available to
figure out where assembly goes wrong.
Please report all bugs at
<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Regexp-Assemble>
Make sure you include the output from the following two commands:
perl -MRegexp::Assemble -le 'print $Regexp::Assemble::VERSION'
perl -V
There is a mailing list for the discussion of "Regexp::Assemble".
Subscription details are available at
<http://listes.mongueurs.net/mailman/listinfo/regexp-assemble>.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This module grew out of work I did building access maps for Postfix, a
modern SMTP mail transfer agent. See <http://www.postfix.org/> for more
information. I used Perl to build large regular expressions for
blocking dynamic/residential IP addresses to cut down on spam and
viruses. Once I had the code running for this, it was easy to start
adding stuff to block really blatant spam subject lines, bogus HELO
strings, spammer mailer-ids and more...
I presented the work at the French Perl Workshop in 2004, and the thing
most people asked was whether the underlying mechanism for assembling
the REs was available as a module. At that time it was nothing more
that a twisty maze of scripts, all different. The interest shown
indicated that a module was called for. I'd like to thank the people
who showed interest. Hey, it's going to make my messy scripts smaller,
in any case.
Thomas Drugeon was a valuable sounding board for trying out early
ideas. Jean Forget and Philippe Blayo looked over an early version.
H.Merijn Brandt stopped over in Paris one evening, and discussed things
over a few beers.
Nicholas Clark pointed out that while what this module does
(?:c|sh)ould be done in perl's core, as per the 2004 TODO, he
encouraged me to continue with the development of this module. In any
event, this module allows one to gauge the difficulty of undertaking
the endeavour in C. I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a blunt pencil.
Paul Johnson settled the question as to whether this module should live
in the Regex:: namespace, or Regexp:: namespace. If you're not
convinced, try running the following one-liner:
perl -le 'print ref qr//'
Philippe Bruhat found a couple of corner cases where this module could
produce incorrect results. Such feedback is invaluable, and only
improves the module's quality.
Machine-Readable Change Log
The file Changes was converted into Changelog.ini by
Module::Metadata::Changes.
AUTHOR
David Landgren
Copyright (C) 2004-2011. All rights reserved.
http://www.landgren.net/perl/
If you use this module, I'd love to hear about what you're using it
for. If you want to be informed of updates, send me a note.
Ron Savage is co-maint of the module, starting with V 0.36.
Repository
<https://github.com/ronsavage/Regexp-Assemble.git>
TODO
1. Tree equivalencies. Currently, /contend/ /content/ /resend/ /resent/
produces (?:conten[dt]|resend[dt]) but it is possible to produce
(?:cont|res)en[dt] if one can spot the common tail nodes (and walk back
the equivalent paths). Or be by me my => /[bm][ey]/ in the simplest
case.
To do this requires a certain amount of restructuring of the code.
Currently, the algorithm uses a two-phase approach. In the first phase,
the trie is traversed and reductions are performed. In the second
phase, the reduced trie is traversed and the pattern is emitted.
What has to occur is that the reduction and emission have to occur
together. As a node is completed, it is replaced by its string
representation. This then allows child nodes to be compared for
equality with a simple 'eq'. Since there is only a single traversal,
the overall generation time might drop, even though the context baggage
required to delve through the tree will be more expensive to carry
along (a hash rather than a couple of scalars).
Actually, a simpler approach is to take on a secret sentinel atom at
the end of every pattern, which gives the reduction algorithm
sufficient traction to create a perfect trie.
I'm rewriting the reduction code using this technique.
2. Investigate how (?>foo) works. Can it be applied?
5. How can a tracked pattern be serialised? (Add freeze and thaw
methods).
6. Store callbacks per tracked pattern.
12. utf-8... hmmmm...
14. Adding qr//'ed patterns. For example, consider
$r->add ( qr/^abc/i )
->add( qr/^abd/ )
->add( qr/^ab e/x );
this should admit abc abC aBc aBC abd abe as matches
16. Allow a fast, unsafe tracking mode, that can be used if a(?bc)?
can't happen. (Possibly carp if it does appear during traversal)?
17. given a-\d+-\d+-\d+-\d+-b, produce a(?:-\d+){4}-b. Something
along the lines of (.{4))(\1+) would let the regexp engine
itself be brought to bear on the matter, which is a rather
appealing idea. Consider
while(/(?!\+)(\S{2,}?)(\1+)/g) { ... $1, $2 ... }
as a starting point.
19. The reduction code has become unbelievably baroque. Adding code
to handle (sting,singing,sing) => s(?:(?:ing)?|t)ing was far
too difficult. Adding more stuff just breaks existing behaviour.
And fixing the ^abcd$ ... bug broke stuff all over again.
Now that the corner cases are more clearly identified, a full
rewrite of the reduction code is needed. And would admit the
possibility of implementing items 1 and 17.
20. Handle debug unrev with a separate bit
23. Japhy's http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=90876 list2range
regexp
24. Lookahead assertions contain serious bugs (as shown by
assembling powersets. Need to save more context during reduction,
which in turn will simplify the preparation of the lookahead
classes. See also 19.
26. _lex() swamps the overall run-time. It stems from the decision
to use a single regexp to pull apart any pattern. A suite of
simpler regexp to pick of parens, char classes, quantifiers
and bare tokens may be faster. (This has been implemented as
_fastlex(), but it's only marginally faster. Perhaps split-by-
char and lex a la C?
27. We don't, as yet, unroll_plus a paren e.g. (abc)+?
28. We don't reroll unrolled a a* to a+ in indented or tracked
output
29. Use (*MARK n) in blead for tracked patterns, and use (*FAIL) for
the unmatchable pattern.
LICENSE
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.36.0 2022-12-04 Regexp::Assemble(3pm)
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