Re: confused constructing a regex

leeg <uk.ac.ox.physics.teaching@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have an input file of a format that looks something like this:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The devil is in the details with regexes, so "something like" is
likely not good enough to get a useable answer.

Can there be spaces in the already-quoted strings? Your example
has none like that.

Can declarations be broken across lines? eg:

someArray = (value1,
value2);

Can you have values on the RHS that you do NOT what to quote?

etc...


> {
> foo = (
> {
> bar = "baz";
> wibble = WOBBLE;
> },
> {
> bar = "barney";
> wibble = JELLY;
> }
> );
> someKey = someValue;
> someArray = (value1, value2);
> blankDict = {};
> };


That looks pretty Formal (as in Formal Methods).

Is it a "little language"?

If so, then find the grammar for it (or write one for it).


You might be able to get the LHS(s) handled by a simple

s/ = / => /;

and let perl autoquote for you.

You'll need to change (some of?) the parens to squares for
anonymous array elements.


> this is almost a declaration of an anonymous hash and with a little
> tweaking I could eval it as such.

> Could someone offer
> some assistance?


It would become Real Easy if you had a grammar for the data, then
you could simply write a parser for the grammar.

Got a grammar?


--
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
tadmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas
.

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