Reggy

A friendly regular expression dialect for text analytics. Typical regex features are removed/adjusted to make natural language queries easier. Able to search a stream with several patterns at once.

cargo add reggy

API Usage

Use the high-level Pattern struct for simple search.

let mut p = Pattern::new("dogs?").unwrap();

assert_eq!(
    p.findall("cat dog dogs cats"),
    vec![(4, 7), (8, 12)]
);

Use the Ast struct to transpile to normal regex syntax.[^1]

let ast = Ast::parse(r"do(gg.)?|(!CAT|CAR FAR)").unwrap();

assert_eq!(
    ast.to_regex(),
    r"(?mi:do(?:gg\.)?|(?-i:CAT|CAR FAR))"
);

Search a Stream

Use the Search struct to search a stream with several patterns at once.

let mut search = Search::compile(&[
    r"$#?#?#.##",
    r"(John|Jane) Doe",
]).unwrap();

Call Search::next to begin searching. It will return definitely-complete matches immediately.

let jane_match = Match::new(1, (0, 8));
assert_eq!(
    search.next("Jane Doe paid John"),
    vec![jane_match]
);

Call Search::next again to continue with the same search state. Note that "John Doe" matched across the next boundary, and spans are relative to the start of the stream.

let john_match = Match::new(1, (14, 22));
let money_match_1 = Match::new(0, (23, 29));
let money_match_2 = Match::new(0, (41, 48));
assert_eq!(
    search.next(" Doe $45.66 instead of $499.00"),
    vec![john_match, money_match_1, money_match_2]
);

Call Search::finish to collect any not-definitely-complete matches once the stream is closed.

assert_eq!(search.finish(), vec![]);

See more in the API docs.

Pattern Language

Reggy is case-insensitive by default. Spaces match any amount of whitespace (i.e. \s+). All the reserved characters mentioned below (\, (, ), ?, |, #, and !) may be escaped with a backslash for a literal match. Patterns are surrounded by implicit unicode word boundaries (i.e. \b). Empty patterns or subpatterns are not permitted.

Examples

Make a character optional with ?

dogs? matches dog and dogs

Create two or more alternatives with |

dog|cat matches dog and cat

Create a sub-pattern with (...)

the qualit(y|ies) required matches the quality required and the qualities required

the only( one)? around matches the only around and the only one around

Create a case-sensitive sub-pattern with (!...)

United States of America|(!USA) matches USA, not usa

Match digits with #

#.## matches 3.14

Unicode, Stream, and Multi-Pattern Semantics

Reggy operates on Unicode scalar values. When searching a stream, next step boundaries are treated as zero-width word boundaries.

Definitely-Complete Matches

Reggy follows greedy matching semantics. A pattern may match after one step of a stream, yet may match a longer form depending on the next step. For example, ab|abb will match s.next("ab"), but a subsequent call to s.next("b") would create a longer match, "abb", which should supercede the match "ab".

Search will only return matches once they are definitely complete and cannot be superceded by future next calls. Each pattern computes a maximum length L (this is why unbound quantifiers are absent from Reggy). Once Reggy has streamed at most L bytes, excluding whitespace, past the start of a match without superceding it, that match will be yielded.

Implementation

The pattern language is parsed with lalrpop (grammar).

The search routines use a regex_automata::dense::DFA. Compared to other regex engines, the dense DFA is memory-intensive and slow to construct, but searches are fast. All of Reggy's features are supported by the DFA except Unicode word boundaries, which are handled by the unicode_segmentation crate.

[^1]: The resulting patterns are equivalent, except that Reggy treats any continuous substring of spaces as \s+ and surrounds patterns with implicit word boundaries.