[erlang-questions] regular expressions (again :)

[Gaspar Chilingarov]

Hi there!

I found a lot of discussions on mailing list about regexps,
but found no really usable solution.

Calling regexp:match or similar functions is too ugly.

what about following syntax ? which can be converted to existing 
functions using parse transform  (or another RE engine if necessary).



String = "http://localhost/script?arg&arg2",

_( TextVariable = RE) should check that pattern matches, so
_(String == "https://") will produce false
_(String == "http://(.*)/(.*)$") will produce
     tuple {"localhost", "script?arg&arg2"} -- i.e. tuple with matched 	
     elements

_(TextVariable =:= RE) should do the same thing as perl m/re/g - i.e. 
return all matches.
_(String =:= "([?&]arg.*)") will return [ {"?arg"}, {"&arg2"} ]
  in case if matching failed false should be returned.

and the last one is substitution - I suggest to use /= and =/=
so

_(String /= RE) will replace only one (first) match
_(String =/= RE) will replace all matches in the string.


_() construct is used, because I found no other short constructs, which 
parse correctly to erlang terms. Are there any ideas?

Writing something like re:r(String == "http://(.*)/(.*)$") is also 
possible, but requires more typing.




-- 
Gaspar Chilingarov

System Administrator,
Network security consulting

t +37493 419763 (mob)
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