CPAN module for generating regexp matches

bgu has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi guys,

This is my first post, hope you can help me out.

I'm looking for a CPAN module that would give all the possible matching strings for a relatively simple regular expression.

By simple I mean that this regexp would not contain +,*, backreferences, non-capturing groups or anything that would be a tricky computation. Charset selection would be a bonus, but anything would be much appreciated.

So having a simple input as

abc[0pz]

to return these strings

abc0 abcp abcz

Thanks!

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Re: CPAN module for generating regexp matches by toolic (Bishop) on Feb 29, 2012 at 01:44 UTC
A CPAN search finds Regexp::Genex. It doesn't seem to support character classes, but this is close: `use warnings; use strict; use Regexp::Genex qw(:all); print "$_ " for strings('abc(0\|p\|z)'); print "\n"; __END__ abc0 abcp abcz` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: CPAN module for generating regexp matches by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Feb 29, 2012 at 08:24 UTC
bgu: An application that seems to almost exactly match the requirements you give is described in Dominus's book "Higher Order Perl" (freely downloadable here) in section 4.3.2 "Genomic Sequence Generator". A more general discussion of generating strings given a regex is contained in section 6.5 "Regex String Generation".	[reply]
Re^2: CPAN module for generating regexp matches by bgu (Novice) on Feb 29, 2012 at 11:47 UTC
Thanks toolic, I've just tried Regexp::Genex and it works fine, I will do some tweaks for the character sets, but yeah, most of the actual string generation is covered. AnomalousMonk, great tip with that book, found a lot of valuable stuff in there, very neatly explained	[reply]
Re: CPAN module for generating regexp matches by Marshall (Canon) on Feb 29, 2012 at 01:19 UTC
`#!usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @strings = glob "{abc}{0,p,z}"; #to enumerate the combinations print "@strings\n"; #abc0 abcp abcz` [download] You can make a regex out of these combinations, `$regex=join("\|",@strings);` or what you had is fine `/abc[0pz]/` note: that abc or the character set 0pz could be Perl variables ($prefix or $endingLetters or whatever). `my $prefix = 'abc'; my $endingLetters = '0pz'; if (/$prefix[$endingLetters]/){...}` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]