PPIx::Regexp(3)

NAME
PPIx::Regexp - Represent a regular expression of some sort

SYNOPSIS
 use PPIx::Regexp;
 use PPIx::Regexp::Dumper;
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( 'qr{foo}smx' );
 PPIx::Regexp::Dumper->new( $re )
     ->print();

INHERITANCE
"PPIx::Regexp" is a PPIx::Regexp::Node.

"PPIx::Regexp" has no descendants.

DESCRIPTION
The purpose of the PPIx-Regexp package is to parse regular expressions in a manner similar to the way the PPI package parses Perl. This class forms the root of the parse tree, playing a role similar to PPI::Document.

This package shares with PPI the property of being round-trip safe. That is,

 my $expr = 's/ ( \d+ ) ( \D+ ) /$2$1/smxg';
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( $expr );
 print $re->content() eq $expr ? "yes\n" : "no\n"

should print 'yes' for any valid regular expression.

Navigation is similar to that provided by PPI. That is to say, things like "children", "find_first", "snext_sibling" and so on all work pretty much the same way as in PPI.

The class hierarchy is also similar to PPI. Except for some utility classes (the dumper, the lexer, and the tokenizer) all classes are descended from PPIx::Regexp::Element, which provides basic navigation. Tokens are descended from PPIx::Regexp::Token, which provides content. All containers are descended from PPIx::Regexp::Node, which provides for children, and all structure elements are descended from PPIx::Regexp::Structure, which provides beginning and ending delimiters, and a type.

There are two features of PPI that this package does not provide - mutability and operator overloading. There are no plans for serious mutability, though something like PPI's "prune" functionality might be considered. Similarly there are no plans for operator overloading, which appears to the author to represent a performance hit for little tangible gain.

NOTICE
The author will attempt to preserve the documented interface, but if the interface needs to change to correct some egregiously bad design or implementation decision, then it will change. Any incompatible changes will go through a deprecation cycle.

The goal of this package is to parse well-formed regular expressions correctly. A secondary goal is not to blow up on ill-formed regular expressions. The correct identification and characterization of ill-formed regular expressions is not a goal of this package.

This policy attempts to track features in development releases as well as public releases. However, features added in a development release and then removed before the next production release will not be tracked, and any functionality relating to such features will be removed. The issue here is the potential re-use (with different semantics) of syntax that did not make it into the production release.

METHODS
This class provides the following public methods. Methods not documented here are private, and unsupported in the sense that the author reserves the right to change or remove them without notice.

  new
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new('/foo/');

This method instantiates a "PPIx::Regexp" object from a string, a PPI::Token::QuoteLike::Regexp, a PPI::Token::Regexp::Match, or a PPI::Token::Regexp::Substitute. Honestly, any PPI::Element will do, but only the three Regexp classes mentioned previously are likely to do anything useful.

Optionally you can pass one or more name/value pairs after the regular expression. The possible options are:

default_modifiers array_reference
    This option specifies a reference to an array of default modifiers to apply to the regular expression being parsed. Each modifier is specified as a string. Any actual modifiers found supersede the defaults.

    When applying the defaults, '?' and '/' are completely ignored, and '^' is ignored unless it occurs at the beginning of the modifier. The first dash ('-') causes subsequent modifiers to be negated.

    So, for example, if you wish to produce a "PPIx::Regexp" object representing the regular expression in

     use re '/smx';
     {
        no re '/x';
        m/ foo /;
     }

    you would (after some help from PPI in finding the relevant statements), do something like

     my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( 'm/ foo /',
         default_modifiers => [ '/smx', '-/x' ] );
    `
    =item encoding name

    This option specifies the encoding of the regular expression. This is passed to the tokenizer, which will "decode" the regular expression string before it tokenizes it. For example:

     my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( '/foo/',
         encoding => 'iso-8859-1',
     );

trace number
    If greater than zero, this option causes trace output from the parse. The author reserves the right to change or eliminate this without notice.

Passing optional input other than the above is not an error, but neither is it supported.

  new_from_cache
This static method wraps "new" in a caching mechanism. Only one object will be generated for a given PPI::Element, no matter how many times this method is called. Calls after the first for a given PPI::Element simply return the same "PPIx::Regexp" object.

When the "PPIx::Regexp" object is returned from cache, the values of the optional arguments are ignored.

Calls to this method with the regular expression in a string rather than a PPI::Element will not be cached.

Caveat: This method is provided for code like Perl::Critic which might instantiate the same object multiple times. The cache will persist until "flush_cache" is called.

  flush_cache
 $re->flush_cache();            # Remove $re from cache
 PPIx::Regexp->flush_cache();   # Empty the cache

This method flushes the cache used by "new_from_cache". If called as a static method with no arguments, the entire cache is emptied. Otherwise any objects specified are removed from the cache.

  capture_names
 foreach my $name ( $re->capture_names() ) {
     print "Capture name '$name'\n";
 }

This convenience method returns the capture names found in the regular expression.

This method is equivalent to

 $self->regular_expression()->capture_names();

except that if "$self->regular_expression()" returns "undef" (meaning that something went terribly wrong with the parse) this method will simply return.

  delimiters
 print join("\t", PPIx::Regexp->new('s/foo/bar/')->delimiters());
 # prints '//      //'

When called in list context, this method returns either one or two strings, depending on whether the parsed expression has a replacement string. In the case of non-bracketed substitutions, the start delimiter of the replacement string is considered to be the same as its finish delimiter, as illustrated by the above example.

When called in scalar context, you get the delimiters of the regular expression; that is, element 0 of the array that is returned in list context.

Optionally, you can pass an index value and the corresponding delimiters will be returned; index 0 represents the regular expression's delimiters, and index 1 represents the replacement string's delimiters, which may be undef. For example,

 print PPIx::Regexp->new('s{foo}<bar>')-delimiters(1);
 # prints '<>'

If the object was not initialized with a valid regexp of some sort, the results of this method are undefined.

  errstr
This static method returns the error string from the most recent attempt to instantiate a "PPIx::Regexp". It will be "undef" if the most recent attempt succeeded.

  failures
 print "There were ", $re->failures(), " parse failures\n";

This method returns the number of parse failures. This is a count of the number of unknown tokens plus the number of unterminated structures plus the number of unmatched right brackets of any sort.

  max_capture_number
 print "Highest used capture number ",
     $re->max_capture_number(), "\n";

This convenience method returns the highest capture number used by the regular expression. If there are no captures, the return will be 0.

This method is equivalent to

 $self->regular_expression()->max_capture_number();

except that if "$self->regular_expression()" returns "undef" (meaning that something went terribly wrong with the parse) this method will too.

  modifier
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( 's/(foo)/${1}bar/smx' );
 print $re->modifier()->content(), "\n";
 # prints 'smx'.

This method retrieves the modifier of the object. This comes from the end of the initializing string or object and will be a PPIx::Regexp::Token::Modifier.

Note that this object represents the actual modifiers present on the regexp, and does not take into account any that may have been applied by default (i.e. via the "default_modifiers" argument to "new()"). For something that takes account of default modifiers, see modifier_asserted(), below.

In the event of a parse failure, there may not be a modifier present, in which case nothing is returned.

  modifier_asserted
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( '/ . /',
     default_modifiers => [ 'smx' ] );
 print $re->modifier_asserted( 'x' ) ? "yes\n" : "no\n";
 # prints 'yes'.

This method returns true if the given modifier is asserted for the regexp, whether explicitly or by the modifiers passed in the "default_modifiers" argument.

Starting with version 0.036_01, if the argument is a single-character modifier followed by an asterisk (intended as a wild card character), the return is the number of times that modifier appears. In this case an exception will be thrown if you specify a multi-character modifier (e.g. 'ee*'), or if you specify one of the match semantics modifiers (e.g. 'a*').

  regular_expression
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( 's/(foo)/${1}bar/smx' );
 print $re->regular_expression()->content(), "\n";
 # prints '/(foo)/'.

This method returns that portion of the object which actually represents a regular expression.

  replacement
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( 's/(foo)/${1}bar/smx' );
 print $re->replacement()->content(), "\n";
 # prints '${1}bar/'.

This method returns that portion of the object which represents the replacement string. This will be "undef" unless the regular expression actually has a replacement string. Delimiters will be included, but there will be no beginning delimiter unless the regular expression was bracketed.

  source
 my $source = $re->source();

This method returns the object or string that was used to instantiate the object.

  type
 my $re = PPIx::Regexp->new( 's/(foo)/${1}bar/smx' );
 print $re->type()->content(), "\n";
 # prints 's'.

This method retrieves the type of the object. This comes from the beginning of the initializing string or object, and will be a PPIx::Regexp::Token::Structure whose "content" is one of 's', 'm', 'qr', or ''.

RESTRICTIONS
By the nature of this module, it is never going to get everything right. Many of the known problem areas involve interpolations one way or another.

  Ambiguous Syntax
Perl's regular expressions contain cases where the syntax is ambiguous. A particularly egregious example is an interpolation followed by square or curly brackets, for example $foo[...]. There is nothing in the syntax to say whether the programmer wanted to interpolate an element of array @foo, or whether he wanted to interpolate scalar $foo, and then follow that interpolation by a character class.

The perlop documentation notes that in this case what Perl does is to guess. That is, it employs various heuristics on the code to try to figure out what the programmer wanted. These heuristics are documented as being undocumented (!) and subject to change without notice.

Given this situation, this module's chances of duplicating every Perl version's interpretation of every regular expression are pretty much nil. What it does now is to assume that square brackets containing only an integer or an interpolation represent a subscript; otherwise they represent a character class. Similarly, curly brackets containing only a bareword or an interpolation are a subscript; otherwise they represent a quantifier.

  Changes in Syntax
Sometimes the introduction of new syntax changes the way a regular expression is parsed. For example, the "\v" character class was introduced in Perl 5.9.5. But it did not represent a syntax error prior to that version of Perl, it was simply parsed as "v". So

 $ perl -le 'print "v" =~ m/\v/ ? "yes" : "no"'

prints "yes" under Perl 5.8.9, but "no" under 5.10.0. "PPIx::Regexp" generally assumes the more modern parse in cases like this.

  Static Parsing
It is well known that Perl can not be statically parsed. That is, you can not completely parse a piece of Perl code without executing that same code.

Nevertheless, this class is trying to statically parse regular expressions. The main problem with this is that there is no way to know what is being interpolated into the regular expression by an interpolated variable. This is a problem because the interpolated value can change the interpretation of adjacent elements.

This module deals with this by making assumptions about what is in an interpolated variable. These assumptions will not be enumerated here, but in general the principal is to assume the interpolated value does not change the interpretation of the regular expression. For example,

 my $foo = 'a-z]';
 my $re = qr{[$foo};

is fine with the Perl interpreter, but will confuse the dickens out of this module. Similarly and more usefully, something like

 my $mods = 'i';
 my $re = qr{(?$mods:foo)};

or maybe

 my $mods = 'i';
 my $re = qr{(?$mods)$foo};

probably sets a modifier of some sort, and that is how this module interprets it. If the interpolation is not about modifiers, this module will get it wrong. Another such semi-benign example is

 my $foo = $] >= 5.010 ? '?<foo>' : '';
 my $re = qr{($foo\w+)};

which will parse, but this module will never realize that it might be looking at a named capture.

  Non-Standard Syntax
There are modules out there that alter the syntax of Perl. If the syntax of a regular expression is altered, this module has no way to understand that it has been altered, much less to adapt to the alteration. The following modules are known to cause problems:

Acme::PerlML, which renders Perl as XML.

Data::PostfixDeref, which causes Perl to interpret suffixed empty brackets as dereferencing the thing they suffix.

Filter::Trigraph, which recognizes ANSI C trigraphs, allowing Perl to be written in the ISO 646 character set.

Perl6::Pugs. Enough said.

Perl6::Rules, which back-ports some of the Perl 6 regular expression syntax to Perl 5.

Regexp::Extended, which extends regular expressions in various ways, some of which seem to conflict with Perl 5.010.

SEE ALSO
Regexp::Parser, which parses a bare regular expression (without enclosing "qr{}", "m//", or whatever) and uses a different navigation model.

SUPPORT
Support is by the author. Please file bug reports at <http://rt.cpan.org>, or in electronic mail to the author.

AUTHOR
Thomas R. Wyant, III wyant at cpan dot org

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2009-2015 by Thomas R. Wyant, III

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl 5.10.0. For more details, see the full text of the licenses in the directory LICENSES.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.