jeremyrsellars/HighRegex

Higher order regular expressions for IList<T> instead of IList<char> (strings).

Higher Order Regular Expressions for .Net

Higher order

"Higher-order" speaks to the complexity of the data and of the expression. While classic regex matches sequences of characters, HighRegex supports sequences of any type, for example a token in text processing or a datapoint.

In Functional Programming, "Higher Order Functions" are functions that take other functions as a parameter and/or return functions. Similarly, higher order regular expressions are composed of other regular expressions.

HighRegex supports:

• Classes of arbitrary data types. Matches exactly 1 position. (See IClass)
• Expressions of arbitrary data types. Matches exactly 0 or more positions. (See IExpression)
• Custom classes [left straight], [^right] (See SetClass and NotClass)
• Any class . (See AnyClass)
• Repetition straight+, 'left{3,6}' (See GreedyRepeatExpression)
• Optionals and lazy repetition straight?, straight??, 'left{3,6}?' (See RepeatExpression)
• Alternation left|right, `right|straight' (See AlternationExpression)
• Sequential a b c, right left (See ListExpression)
• Atomic anchors begining ^ and end $ of sequence. (See StartExpression and EndExpression)
• Atomic look ahead (?=left) and negatives (?!right)`. (See LookAheadExpression and NegativeLookAheadExpression)
• Atomic look behind (?<=left) and negatives (?<!right). (See LookBackExpression and NegativeLookBackExpression)

HighRegex does not support:

• Grouping and back-referencing (?<lastName>name)
  • Grouping would be a great feature... Hopefully that is coming soon.
  • Back-referencing \1 would be a nice feature, but may add complexity. Ideally, if breaking changes are necessary to support this, it would be opt-in.
• Modifiers (?i), etc.
  • Since you have complete control over the classes, modifiers are probably not necessary.
• Atomic Grouping (?>right|left) is not supported.
  • This would be a nice feature, and probably not too difficult.
• Continuing matches \G is not supported.
  • Indirect support with IExpression.IsMatchAt
• Comments. (?# not supported)
  • you'll probably be using an expression composed of self-documenting, named expressions, making comments unnecessary
• Replacements. Regex.Replace("ABC", "[AEIOU]", "o") This would be an interesting way to do substitutions or perhaps delete "bad data" from a sequence.