RE: [q-lang-users] silly regex wonderings

[David v. <da...@pu...>]

Tim Haynes wrote:
> However, I'm having a bad time trying to get my embolden function to work.
> It should be simple; anywhere you see a word surrounded by `*', replace it
> with "<bold>whatever</bold>" instead. Making this happen in Q seems to be
> rather a hassle, however. Currently, I've got:
> 
>  |   embolden S = T if #T>0
>  |                   where T=regex "gn" "(.+?)\\*(.+?)\\*(.+?)" S
>  |                       (strcat [reg 1,
>  |                                tag "bold" (reg 2),
>  |                                reg 3]);
>  |              = S otherwise;
>  |

Try:
<q>
embolden S = (strcat T)++regskip
               where T=regex "gn" "([^\\*]+?)\\*([^\\*]+?)\\*([^\\*]+?)" S
                 (strcat [reg 1,
                          tag "bold" (reg 2),
                          reg 3]);
</q>

Which gives
==> embolden "this is some *bold* text, and behold, some *more* of it"
"this is some <bold>bold</bold> text, and behold, some <bold>more</bold> of
it"

Your regex was only giving one match, as the other "*"s also match as part
of the "(.+?)". Just replace the "." with "[^\\*]" to match anything but
"*".

The regskip just adds any leftover text, so instead of:
==> embolden "this is some *bold* text, and a lone * at the end"
"this is some <bold>bold</bold> text, and a lone "

You get:
==> embolden "this is some *bold* text, and a lone * at the end"
"this is some <bold>bold</bold> text, and a lone * at the end"

Which may or may not be what you want, this could be considered an error.

BTW, Hi there.
I'm a maths student, I've been lurking here a while and I just finished my
exams
for the year, which gives me more time to play with Q and other nice things
:)
Cheers,
David.