rrrex

Really Readable Regular Expressions

rrrex is a new syntax for regular expressions. It trades compactness for readability by real humans, and picks up a couple nice perks along the way.

Crash Course

"The string you'd like to search".rmatch? { "string" }

"abc".rmatch? { "ab" + "c" }

"abc".rmatch? { "xyz".or "abc" }

You don't have to worry about escaping special characters in your strings any more: "{symbols} .&+ [galore]".rmatch? { "{symbols} .&+ [galore]" }

You can combine operations and get the expected precedence: "abc".rmatch? { "ab" + ( "z".or "c" ) }

Repetition: "aaabc".rmatch? { 1.or_more "a" } "aaabc".rmatch? { 5.or_less "a" } "aaabc".rmatch? { 3.exactly "a" } "aaabc".rmatch? { (1..5).of "a" } These are equivalent: "aaabc".rmatch? { 0.or_more "a" } "aaabc".rmatch? { any "a" } And these are equivalent: "aaabc".rmatch? { 1.or_more "a" } "aaabc".rmatch? { some "a" }

Special character sets: "abc1234.&*".rmatch? { 10.exactly any_char } "abc1234".rmatch? { 3.exactly letter } "abc1234".rmatch? { 4.exactly digit } "abc_123".rmatch? { 7.exactly word_char } " ".rmatch? { whitespace } Or create your own: "abc".rmatch? { 3.exactly "a".."c" }

Two types of negation: "x".rmatch? { word_char.not "x" } # => nil "y".rmatch? { word_char.not "x" } "x".rmatch? { _not "x" } # => nil "y".rmatch? { _not "x" }

Groups: match = "1234567890 Central Processing".rmatch? do group :serial do some digit end + some whitespace + group :source do any any_char end end match