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The patterns in the input are written using an extended set of regular expressions. These are:

x
match the character x.
.
any character except newline.
[xyz]
a character class; in this case, the pattern matches either an x, a y or a z.
[abj-oZ]
a character class with a range in it; matches an a, a b, any letter from j through o, or a Z.
[^A-Z]
a negated character class, i.e., any character but those in the class. In this case, any character except an uppercase letter.
[^A-Z\n]
any character except an uppercase letter or a newline.
[a-z]{+}[0-9]
a union of character classes, i.e., any character in either of those classes. In this case, any lowercase letter or digit.
[a-z]{-}[aeiouy]
a subtraction of character classes, i.e., any character in the first class which is not in the second class. In this case, any consonant lowercase letter.
[^\n]{-}([a-z]{+}[0-9])
any character except a newline, a lowercase letter or a digit. Note the use of parentheses in character class operations. Without parentheses, a digit could have been matched.
r*
zero or more r's, where r is any regular expression.
r+
one or more r's.
r?
zero or one r's (that is, "an optional r").
r{2,5}
anywhere from two to five r's.
r{2,}
two or more r's.
r{4}
exactly four r's.
{name}
the expansion of the "name" definition.
"[xyz]\"foo"
the literal string: [xyz]"foo.
\X
if X is an a, b, f, n, r, t, or v, then the ANSI-C interpretation of \X. Otherwise, a literal X (used to escape operators such as *).
\0
a null character (ASCII code 0).
\123
the character with octal value 123.
\x2a
the character with hexadecimal value 2a.
\x{03B2}
the Unicode character with hexadecimal value 03B2.
\u03B2
the Unicode character with hexadecimal value 03B2.
\u{03B2}
the Unicode character with hexadecimal value 03B2.
(r)
match an r; parentheses are used to override precedence.
rs
the regular expression r followed by the regular expression s; called concatenation.
(b:r)
in utf8 mode, match an r where characters in r are interpreted as bytes (and not Unicode characters).
(u:r)
in utf8 mode, match an r where characters in r are interpreted as Unicode characters. Overrides (b:s) when it appears in s.

r|s
either an r or an s.

r/s
an r but only if it is followed by an s. The text matched by s is included when determining whether this rule is the "longest match", but is then returned to the input before the action is executed. So the action only sees the text matched by r. This type of pattern is called trailing context. (There are some combinations of r/s that gelex cannot match correctly, such as in zx*/xy. See gelex's limitations for details.).
^r
an r, but only at the beginning of a line (i.e., when just starting to scan, or right after a newline has been scanned).
r$
an r, but only at the end of a line (i.e., just before a newline). Equivalent to r/\n.
Note that gelex's notion of "newline" is exactly what is interpreted as %N by the Eiffel compiler that was used to compile gelex; in particular, on some DOS systems you must either filter out \r's in the input yourself, or explicitly use r/\r\n for r$.

<s>r
an r, but only in start condition s (see discussion about start conditions for details).
<s1,s2,s3>r
same, but in any of start conditions s1, s2, or s3.
<*>r
an r in any start condition, even an exclusive one.

<<EOF>>
an end-of-file.
<s1,s2><<EOF>>
an end-of-file when in start condition s1 or s2.

Some notes on patterns

Everywhere where a character is valid (by itself or inside a character class), a Unicode character can be used as well. Just make sure the input file uses the UTF-8 encoding and starts with the BOM character. The character set is the set of non-surrogate valid Unicode characters, except with (b:r) where it's the set of bytes (8-bit characters). As a consequence, . or [^\n] is any Unicode character except newline, and (b:.) or (b:[^\n]) is any byte between \x00 and \xFF except newline \x0A.

Note that inside of a character class, all regular expression operators lose their special meaning except escape (\) and the character class operators, -, ], and, at the beginning of the class, ^.

The regular expressions listed above are grouped according to precedence, from highest precedence at the top to lowest at the bottom. Those grouped together have equal precedence. For example,

foo|bar*

is the same as:

(foo)|(ba(r*))

since the * operator has higher precedence than concatenation, and concatenation higher than alternation (|). This pattern therefore matches either the string foo or the string ba followed by zero-or-more r's. To match foo or zero-or-more bar's, use:

foo|(bar)*

and to match zero-or-more foo's-or-bar's:

(foo|bar)*

A negated character class such as the example [^A-Z] above will match a newline unless \n (or an equivalent escape sequence) is one of the characters explicitly present in the negated character class (e.g., [^A-Z\n]). This is unlike how many other regular expression tools treat negated character classes, but unfortunately the inconsistency is historically entrenched. Matching newlines means that a pattern like [^"]* can match the entire input unless there's another quote in the input.

A rule can have at most one instance of trailing context (the / operator or the $ operator). The start conditions, ^, and <<EOF>> patterns can only occur at the beginning of a pattern, and, as well as with / and $, cannot be grouped inside parentheses. A ^ which does not occur at the beginning of a rule or a $ which does not occur at the end of a rule loses its special properties and is treated as a normal character.

The following are illegal:

foo/bar$
<sc1>foo<sc2>bar

Note that the first of these, can be written foo/bar\n. The following will result in $ or ^ being treated as a normal character:

foo|(bar$)
foo|^bar

If what's wanted is a foo or a bar-followed-by-a-newline, the following could be used (the special | action is explained in the Actions section):

foo	|
bar$	-- action goes here

A similar trick will work for matching a foo or a bar-at-the-beginning-of-a-line.


Copyright © 1998-2019, Eric Bezault
mailto:
ericb@gobosoft.com
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Last Updated: 27 September 2019

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