Regexp

[Regan Heath]

okibi wrote:
> I've got another question regarding regexp:
> 
> If my document is full of variables such as "##var1 " and I want to replace them, with say "<var>var1</var>" how would I go about doing that? The variables now are preceded with two pound signs and ended with a single space.
> 
> Also, could you please explain how the regexp function that you give me works? I'm trying to understand these, but think I'm not grasping the concept.
> 
> Thanks!

I'm no regexp expert but I did something similar last night.

You can use std.regexp.sub, eg.

std.regexp.sub(document, r"##([^ ]+) ", r"<var>$1</var>", "gi");

document - your complete document, or part of it.

"gi"     - global and case insensitive.
            global means look for the string more than once
            case insensitive is self explanatory


r"##([^ ]+) " - wysiwyg pattern:
##            - look for # followed by #
( and )       - forms a group which can be pasted into result
[^ ]+         - 1 or more characters which are NOT space
               - the pattern finishes with a space

r"<var>$1</var>" - wysiwyg format:
<var>            - literal
$1               - replace with first group from pattern
</var>           - literal

So, it should look through document for the pattern "##([^ ]+) " and 
replace it with the format "<var>$1</var>"

I tested this with:

import std.regexp, std.stdio;

string document = "This is a test ##bob  and ##fred  went for a walk to 
##place  how happy I am";
string pattern = r"##([^ ]+) ";
string format = r"<var>$1</var>";

void main()
{
	writefln(std.regexp.sub(document, pattern, format, "gi"));
}

Seems to work. :)

Regan