Re: [Caml-list] Re: help with regular expression

[Martin Jambon <martin.jambon@ens-lyon.org>]

On 12/06/10 05:11, Sylvain Le Gall wrote:
> On 06-12-2010, David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com> wrote:
>> zaid Khalid wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> Hint I am using (Str.regexp)
>>
>> There are other libraries (e.g. pcre-ocaml) which provide different (I
>> would say more powerful, rather than strictly better!)
>> implementations.
>>
>>
> 
> There is also syntax extension like mikmatch, that helps to write regexp
> in a very meaningful syntax:
> 
> match str with 
> | RE bol "a"* | "ab"* eol ->
>   true
> | _ ->
>   false

If I understand correctly the original problem, the solution is:

match str with
  | RE ("a"* | "aba"*) eos ->
      (* matches always the beginning of the string,
         eos enforces a match at the end of the string,
         and the vertical bar has the lowest priority
         and so parentheses are needed. *)
      true
  | _ ->
      false


> http://martin.jambon.free.fr/mikmatch-manual.html
> http://martin.jambon.free.fr/mikmatch.html
> 
> You can use pcre and str with mikmatch.

I would recommend the pcre variant mostly for one feature that is not
provided by str:  lazy quantifiers, i.e. "repeat as little as possible
before trying to match what comes next".


Martin