man.postnix Miscellaneous man pages of Plan 9 related material

     REGEX(2)                                                 REGEX(2)

     NAME
          regex - regular expression recognizer module

     SYNOPSIS
          include "regex.m";
          regex := load Regex Regex->PATH;

          compile:   fn(e: string, flag: int): (Re, string);
          execute:   fn(x: Re; s: string): array of (int,int);
          executese: fn(x: Re, s: string, se: (int, int), bol: int, eol: int):
                         array of (int, int);

     DESCRIPTION
          Regular expressions are defined by regexp(6). Compile
          returns (as the first element of the result tuple) a com-
          piled form of the regular expression given in string e. If e
          is not a valid regular expression, compile returns the tuple
          (nil, diag) where diag is a diagnostic string.  The effect
          of flag is described below.

          Execute matches the compiled regular expression x against
          string s. It returns nil on no match, otherwise it returns
          an array.  The element with index 0 gives the character
          positions of the first character of some longest leftmost
          match and the first character beyond the match.  If the com-
          pilation flag was 0, there are no more elements.  If flag
          was 1, there is one element for each pair of parentheses in
          the regular expression, counting left parentheses left to
          right starting at 1.  The nth element gives the position of
          the last match to the nth parenthesized subexpression, or
          (-1,-1) if the subexpression does not participate in the
          overall match.

          Executese is similar to execute but allows the start and end
          points in the string to be specified, as tuple se: (start ,
          end), where start is the index in s of the initial character
          to be matched, and end is the index in s of the first char-
          acter beyond the substring to be matched (and can be the
          length of s). If bol is non-zero, the initial character is
          at the beginning of a line, allowing an initial match by the
          regular expression operator `^'; if eol is non-zero, the
          last character is at the end of a line, allowing a match by
          the operator `$'.

     EXAMPLES
          (re, nil) := regex->compile("(thick )*(chocolate |raspberry )?"+
                         "(topp|fill)ing", 0);

          (re, nil) := regex->compile("[ABCb-z]+", 0);
          a := regex->execute(re, s:="aAbBcCdD");

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     REGEX(2)                                                 REGEX(2)

          (beg, end) := a[0];
          s[beg:end] == "AbBcCd";

          (re, nil) := regex->compile("a*b*", 0);
          a := regex->execute(re, "bbaabb");
          (beg, end) := a[0];
          (beg, end) == (0,2);

     SOURCE
          /appl/lib/regex.b

     SEE ALSO
          regexp(6)

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