Regex Testing

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

Currently, I build regexes in small chunks, adding functionality until they work. While this works fine for general programming, it's less efficient for a regex due to my inability to easily step through them when they break. Sometimes I write some pretty hairy regexes. Two of the regexes I've recently had to create are below. Unfortunately, I can't just glance at them and understand what they do, despite the fact that I wrote them.

die "Bad number!\n" 
    if $number !~ /(?:[\d]{1,6}\.[\d]{0,5})|(?:[\d]{0,5}\.[\d]{1,6})|(
+?:[\d]{1,7})/;

$count ++ if $stuff =~ /(?i:p)rods(?:\\s+(?:[^&]|&(?!gt;))+)?/;
[download]

Is there some way to watch the regex engine as it goes along? I'm thinking something similar to the Perl's debugger.

I actually use the /x modifier and comment them heavily, which helps. I've reduced them to one line above for effect.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Comment on Regex Testing Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Regex Testing by chromatic (Archbishop) on Sep 27, 2000 at 03:49 UTC
You could use the re pragma: `use re 'debug';` It'll give you more information than you ever wanted, AND it's built-in. :)	[reply] [d/l]
RE: Re: Regex Testing by converter (Priest) on Sep 27, 2000 at 05:03 UTC
For what it's worth, the perldebguts manpage includes the details on the debugger's compile- and run-time outputs. You'll want to read it.	[reply]
Re: Re: Regex Testing by Anonymous Monk on Dec 03, 2001 at 22:07 UTC
Cool! I have always been stumped by RE's that didn't work for some stupid tyop. This pragma help me find the problem in seconds!!! There is another flavor: use re 'debugcolor'; It throws in some bolding and reverse video to enhance the display.	[reply]
RE: Regex Testing by Adam (Vicar) on Sep 27, 2000 at 03:58 UTC
I've never used it, but Sriram Srinivasan mentions the Devel::RegExp in Advanced Perl Programing.	[reply]
RE: Regex Testing by meonkeys (Chaplain) on Sep 27, 2000 at 20:41 UTC
If you're on Linux, you can try RegExplorer: a realtime visual regex environment.	[reply]
Re: Regex Testing by princepawn (Parson) on Sep 27, 2000 at 16:36 UTC
Well, for one thing Damian Conway has written Text::Balanced to facilitate the matching of certain oft-matched patterns, ie, bracketed/parenthesized text, quoted text, tagged (XML/HTML) text, delimiter-separated, etc. In addition, if you want to label parts of your regexes and then piece them together, you can use Damian's Parse::RecDescent. I like it very much for this purpose. Be sure to read on the skip directive to understand the default and configurable nature of how individual regexes are pieced together.	[reply]