funexp

A fun and functional way to write regular expressions (RegExp).

FunExp is a useful tool for larger projects that depends on RegExp to do heavy work. It can speed up the learning process of a new person that is envolved with the project, or just make RegExp easily readable. It has a fast learning curve (faster than RegExp itself) and can be integrated with any language that supports regular expressions.

Documentation

This section will be moved to a dedicated page in the future.

• mod

  • Represents a modifier. It depends on the RegExp target language.
    • Parameters:
      • g
        • Don't return after first match.
      • m
        • start and end match start/end of line.
      • i
        • Case insensitive match.
      • ... and many more depending on the target language.

• start or end

  • Represents the start or ending of the capture. If the modifier m is present, will represent the start or ending of line.

• literal or string

  • Represents a literal text. Any RegExp character will be automatically escaped.

  • Parameters:

    • optional - If it's an optional capture.
      • Default: false

  • Example:

    literal|funexp is fun?! yes!

    will be converted into

    /funexp is fun\?! yes!/`

• space

  • Represents a literal space character ( ). It's used for legibility purposes.

  • Example:

    space

    will be converted into

    / /

• group

  • Represents a group (capturing or non-capturing).

  • Parameters:

    • optional - If the entire group is an optional capture.
      • Default: false
    • name - The group name
    • capture - If it is a non-capturing group, used just for matching.
      • Default: true

  • Example:

    literal|This next text is
    space
    
    group(capture=false, optional=true)
        literal|surely
        space
    
    literal|optional

    will be converted into

    /This next text is (?:surely )?optional/

• alternative

  • Represents an alternative choice.

  • Example:

    literal|I believe in
    space
    alternative
        literal|pugs
        literal|fun

    will be converted into

    /I believe in pugs|fun/

• meta

  • Represents the meta operator (dot).

• quantifier

  • Represents a quantifier, used to repeat a match. One of the given parameters needs to be present.

  • Parameters:

    • * - Matches zero or more times.
    • + - Matches one or more times.

API

You can use funexp directly from your code:

const funexp = require("funexp");

const regex = funexp.parse(`
literal|I love to use
space
group(name="choice")
    alternative
        literal|funexp
        literal|regexp
`);

"I love to use funexp".match(regex);

Examples

You can view examples inside the test folder.

Credits

• pug.js
  • funexp uses pug-lexer and pug-parser as the bases for lexing and parsing the pseudo-code.

License

AGPL-3.0