I wrote a program to parse a simple regex so as to return a string that would match the regex! I am very thrilled. The code requires Perl 5.6. To test it, go to the following URL: http://www.pobox.com/~japhy/regexes/parseRE.

Update: the next version of this will appear as the RegexParser module. It will offer functions for finding a string to match a regex, and for doing its best at reversing a regular expression.

The following is a (rather incomplete) list of known cool features:

• supports alternation, character classes, etc. (and it chooses the match randomly)
• supports backreferences (wow!)
• supports nested backreferences (double wow!)

The following is a (rather incomplete) list of known bugs:

• the ^ and $ anchors are there, but I don't do anything with them, really (is this really a bug?)
• look-ahead and look-behind are not yet supported
• complex things like (?>...) and (??{...}) are obviously not supported
• the \b and \B assertions are not yet supported (they will be supported soon)
• multi-line (the m modifier) support is not yet available
• UPDATE: character classes are a bit buggy... I'm working to fix this
• the code is kinda unreadable...

PLEASE try this puppy out. It took me all day to make this, and I think it's damn cool. If you find a bug and it's not on the abbreviated bug list, DON'T hesitate to email me about it! My email address can be found on my web site and on my home node.

$_="goto+F.print+chop;\n=yhpaj";F1:eval

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