ANNOUNCE: LablPCRE 0.9 - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml

ANNOUNCE: LablPCRE 0.9 - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml

[Robert Roessler]

The second public release of the LablPCRE OCaml binding for PCRE is 
now available, featuring a new "module" interface with expanded 
functionality and supporting PCRE releases 6.1 - 6.4 (current).

LablPCRE still provides simple and easy to use access to regular 
expression pattern matching - while a richer module-based interface is 
now standard, the original "object" interface is available for those 
who prefer that style.

While I have been pleased to incorporate feedback on the interface 
layout, I am still very interested in expanding the platforms 
supported "natively" in the Makefile, and welcome any contributions, 
patches, or suggestions in this area... not only will these help 
LablPCRE advance to "1.0" status, they will greatly facilitate the 
release (and usefulness) of other projects to the OCaml community.

With a distribution incorporating pre-built Windows binaries, LablPCRE 
is released under the "new" BSD license, and may be downloaded here:

http://www.rftp.com/Downloads.shtml

Robert Roessler
roessler@rftp.com
http://www.rftp.com

Re: [Caml-list] ANNOUNCE: LablPCRE 0.9 - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml

[N. Owen Gunden]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2005 at 09:42:30PM -0800, Robert Roessler wrote:
> The second public release of the LablPCRE OCaml binding for PCRE is 
> now available, featuring a new "module" interface with expanded 
> functionality and supporting PCRE releases 6.1 - 6.4 (current).

What is the advantage of your PCRE bindings over Markus Mottl's
pcre-ocaml?  How do they differ?

Is there API documentation for your library on the web somewhere?

Re: [Caml-list] ANNOUNCE: LablPCRE 0.9 - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml

[Robert Roessler]

N. Owen Gunden wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2005 at 09:42:30PM -0800, Robert Roessler wrote:
>> The second public release of the LablPCRE OCaml binding for PCRE is 
>> now available, featuring a new "module" interface with expanded 
>> functionality and supporting PCRE releases 6.1 - 6.4 (current).
> 
> What is the advantage of your PCRE bindings over Markus Mottl's
> pcre-ocaml?  How do they differ?

At the time (mid-June 2005), Markus' package would not build properly 
on Windows... he invited me to contribute a fix, and in good open 
source style, I built my own. ;)

As I was already familiar with PCRE in its "POSIX" interface guise, I 
was looking for a relatively simple interface... I found the sheer 
comprehensiveness of Markus' binding (giving access to *all* of PCRE) 
daunting.  So, deciding that others with modest pattern-matching needs 
might also appreciate a simpler interface, I built LablPCRE (certainly 
not as a replacement, but as a small-footprint alternative).

There are really only three "major" functions in LablPCRE: regcomp to 
compile REs, regexec to test them against input, and regmatch when all 
that is needed is a simple match/nomatch query (this last is my own 
low-resource-consumption addition - it is not included in the POSIX API).

In addition, of course, there are a handful of functions for accessing 
the match state, errors, and/or any captured substrings from a regexec 
invocation.  Some effort is made to make a Pcre.t value as light as 
possible, e.g., a reference to the tested string will only be kept if 
the match succeeded *and* substring capture was requested.

The original release made the above (minus regmatch) available in an 
"object" form... subsequent experience with OCaml vernacular and idiom 
suggested that a "module" interface was superior, so the current 
release has been re-oriented to that style (with the original object 
interface still available).

> Is there API documentation for your library on the web somewhere?

Yes - in the LablPCRE-0.9.tar.gz file on the download site. :)

As seems to be somewhat common in the OCaml world, there is a 
commented .mli file, and a README.txt with more in-depth discussions 
and examples.

Robert Roessler
roessler@rftp.com
http://www.rftp.com

Re: [Caml-list] ANNOUNCE: LablPCRE 0.9 - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml

[Christoph Bauer]

> At the time (mid-June 2005), Markus' package would not build properly
> on Windows... he invited me to contribute a fix, and in good open
> source style, I built my own. ;)

OCaml-MinGW-Maxi contains a working version of ocaml-pcre. You can
find my build notes under
http://lasagne.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/omm/protokol.txt., Section 3. The Makefile.mingw
can be found at http://lasagne.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/omm/.


best regards,
Christoph Bauer