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Definitely a debugable way to write regexes. Whenever I have to maintain a hairy regex, I like to plot the regex as a railroad diagram. These web based tools

Definitely a debugable way to write regexes. Whenever I have to maintain a hairy regex, I like to plot the regex as a railroad diagram. These web based tools can do it: https://www.debuggex.com/ https://www.debuggex.com/ http://jex.im/regulex/ http://jex.im/regulex/

philjohn 12y ago
Love it - just visualised the PCRE generated from the EBNF for the N-Triples RDF serialisation format[1] :) https://www.debuggex.com/r/Yxqws81Uif-BGBN8 https://www.debuggex.com/r/Yxqws81Uif-BGBN8 Important note - this is built up programmatically, it's not just a string dumped in a parser! [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/n-triples/#n-triples-grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/n-triples/#n-triples-grammar
- jgalt212 12y ago
  That is one hairy regex. Now the inverse would be even better. You modify the railroad chart and the regex updates.
  - philjohn 12y ago
    Fairly hairy, yes, but if you follow the railroad tracks, it's quite succint for what it's doing!