1$XFree86: xc/programs/xedit/lisp/re/README,v 1.3 2002/09/23 01:25:41 paulo Exp $
2
3LAST UPDATED: $Date$
4
5 This is a small regex library for fast matching tokens in text. It was built
6to be used by xedit and it's syntax highlight code. It is not compliant with
7IEEE Std 1003.2, but is expected to be used where very fast matching is
8required, and exotic patterns will not be used.
9
10 To understand what kind of patterns this library is expected to be used with,
11see the file <XRoot>xc/programs/xedit/lisp/modules/progmodes/c.lsp and some
12samples in the file tests.txt, with comments for patterns that will not work,
13or may give incorrect results.
14
15 The library is not built upon the standard regex library by Henry Spencer,
16but is completely written from scratch, but it's syntax is heavily based on
17that library, and the only reason for it to exist is that unfortunately
18the standard version does not fit the requirements needed by xedit.
19Anyways, I would like to thanks Henry for his regex library, it is a really
20very useful tool.
21
22 Small description of understood tokens:
23
24 M A T C H I N G
25------------------------------------------------------------------------
26. Any character (won't match newline if compiled with RE_NEWLINE)
27\w Any word letter (shortcut to [a-zA-Z0-9_]
28\W Not a word letter (shortcut to [^a-zA-Z0-9_]
29\d Decimal number
30\D Not a decimal number
31\s A space
32\S Not a space
33\l A lower case letter
34\u An upper case letter
35\c A control character, currently the range 1-32 (minus tab)
36\C Not a control character
37\o Octal number
38\O Not an octal number
39\x Hexadecimal number
40\X Not an hexadecimal number
41\< Beginning of a word (matches an empty string)
42\> End of a word (matches an empty string)
43^ Beginning of a line (matches an empty string)
44$ End of a line (matches an empty string)
45[...] Matches one of the characters inside the brackets
46 ranges are specified separating two characters with "-".
47 If the first character is "^", matches only if the
48 character is not in this range. To add a "]" make it
49 the first character, and to add a "-" make it the last.
50\1 to \9 Backreference, matches the text that was matched by a group,
51 that is, text that was matched by the pattern inside
52 "(" and ")".
53
54
55 O P E R A T O R S
56------------------------------------------------------------------------
57() Any pattern inside works as a backreference, and is also
58 used to group patterns.
59| Alternation, allows choosing different possibilities, like
60 character ranges, but allows patterns of different lengths.
61
62
63 R E P E T I T I O N
64------------------------------------------------------------------------
65<re>* <re> may occur any number of times, including zero
66<re>+ <re> must occur at least once
67<re>? <re> is optional
68<re>{<e>} <re> must occur exactly <e> times
69<re>{<n>,} <re> must occur at least <n> times
70<re>{,<m>} <re> must not occur more than <m> times
71<re>{<n>,<m>} <re> must occur at least <n> times, but no more than <m>
72
73
74 Note that "." is a special character, and when used with a repetition
75operator it changes completely its meaning. For example, ".*" matches
76anything up to the end of the input string (unless the pattern was compiled
77with RE_NEWLINE, in that case it will match anything, but a newline).
78
79
80 Limitations:
81
82o Only minimal matches supported. The engine has only one level "backtracking",
83 so, it also only does minimal matches to allow backreferences working
84 properly, and to avoid failing to match depending on the input.
85
86o Only one level "grouping", for example, with the pattern:
87 (a(b)c)
88 If "abc" is anywhere in the input, it will be in "\1", but there will
89 not exist a "\2" for "b".
90
91o Some "special repetitions" were not implemented, these are:
92 .{<e>}
93 .{<n>,}
94 .{,<m>}
95 .{<n>,<m>}
96
97o Some patterns will never match, for example:
98 \w*\d
99 Since "\w*" already includes all possible matches of "\d", "\d" will
100 only be tested when "\w*" failed. There are no plans to make such
101 patterns work.
102
103
104 Some of these limitations may be worked on future versions of the library,
105but this is not what the library is expected to do, and, adding support for
106correct handling of these would probably make the library slower, what is
107not the reason of it to exist in the first time.
108
109 If you need "true" regex than this library is not for you, but if all
110you need is support for very quickly finding simple patterns, than this
111library can be a very powerful tool, on some patterns it can run more
112than 200 times faster than "true" regex implementations! And this is
113the reason it was written.
114
115
116
117 Send comments and code to me (paulo@XFree86.Org) or to the XFree86
118mailing/patch lists.
119
120--
121Paulo
122