Regexp(3I)

✨ NAME ✨

okay bestie, welcome to Regexp — the InterViews Reference Manual girlie whose whole job is regular expression searching 💅✨ (yes the page header says Regexp(3I) and the manual is the InterViews Reference Manual, we're fancy like that 🎀)

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <InterViews/regexp.h>

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So a Regexp is literally a little glow-up container for a regular expression pattern 👑 and it comes with operations for searching and matching that pattern against a string. No cap.

The syntax of the regular expression pattern? It's exactly the same as the syntax for ed(1). Periodt. 💖

And the tea is: you can get information about the most recent match of the regular expression — and about its sub-expressions too 🫶 iconic behaviour honestly.

💖 PUBLIC OPERATIONS 💖

🎀 Constructors 🎀

• Regexp(const char* pattern)
• Regexp(const char* pattern, int length)

These two construct a brand-new Regexp for pattern. Slay. ✨

🔍 Matching & Searching 🔍

• int Match(const char* text, int length, int index) — this one attempts a match against text (which is of length length, obvs) at position index. The return value is the length of the matching string, or a negative number if the match failed 😭 fr.
• int Search(const char* text, int length, int index, int range) — this one searches for a match in the string text (of length length, again). Matches are attempted starting at positions between index and index plus range. Here's the vibe check:
  • if range is positive, the first match after index is reported ⭐
  • if range is negative, the first match before index is reported 💫

The return value is the index of the starting position of the match, or a negative number if there's no match in the specified range 💀

🧚 Match Info Girlies 🧚

• int BeginningOfMatch(int subexp)
• int EndOfMatch(int subexp)

These return information about the most recent match 💜. If subexp is zero (which is the default, bestie), info is reported for the complete regular expression. Any other value of subexp refers to sub-expressions in the pattern 🫶. For example, if subexp is 2, information is returned for the sub-expression specified by the second pair of \( and \) delimiters in the pattern. iykyk 💅

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• ed(1)

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🌈 this iconic lil manual page came from InterViews, dated 23 May 1989, and its header/footer name is Regexp(3I) — yes she's been serving regex realness since '89 and she still ate 🍓💅✨