The problem

Some years ago I wrote a class to find all possible matches of a pattern against a string, including overlapping matches. If there was an /a switch that accomplished this, it would look like this:

    foreach ('abc' =~ /.+?/a) {
        print "$_\n";        
    }

    __END__
    a
    ab
    abc
    b
    bc
    c

[download]

I figure I'm going to release it to CPAN. Before I do that I'd appreciate some feedback.

Description of the classes

I currently call it Regexp::AllMatches and use an OO interface. Here's how it's used:

    use Regexp::AllMatches;

    my $matcher = Regexp::AllMatches->new(STRING => qr/PATTERN/);

    while (my ($match) = $matcher->next) {
        print "$match\n";
    }

[download]

$matcher is a simple iterator, and the only methods are

    * new
    * clone
    * next

[download]

$match is a match object that stringifies to the matched string ($&) and implements the following methods:

    * prematch ($`)
    * match ($&)
    * postmatch ($`)
    * group ($<*digits*>)
    * groups

[download]

I also wrote Regexp::AllMatches::Extended that implements some extra convenience methods at the cost of memory and speed.

    * curr
    * prev
    * reset
    * all

[download]

Regexp::AllMatches and Regexp::AllMatches::Extended will be two different modules. The match object is currently defined in Regexp::AllMatches, and is at the moment not for public instantiation.

So, what do you think of

Any feedback and thoughts will be appreciated.

lodin

Update: Regexp::Exhaustive is the new name. I'm not too happy about Regexp::Exhaustive::Extended though. Any ideas? How about Regexp::Exhaustive::Extra(s) or Regexp::Exhaustive::Convenient?

Update: After a bit of cleaning Regexp::Exhaustive::Extended became nothing but a generic iterator decorator, so it's gone. The all method is now put directly in Regexp::Exhaustive instead.

Update: Uploaded to CPAN as Regexp::Exhaustive.

In reply to RFC: Regexp::AllMatches by lodin

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