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Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers ISO UNIX Tutoring in Regular Expressions Post 302966725 by dtalvacchio on Monday 15th of February 2016 11:31:41 PM
Old 02-16-2016
Hello Aia, and thanks for the response.

I'm interested in learning the ins and outs of regular expressions for the purpose of crossword and other word puzzle writing.

Typically with crossword writing, the basic grep commands are more than sufficient for any needs that I might have.

But lately I'm developing some new types of word puzzles, and I'm trying to perform some search operations which are difficult but I believe may be possible in Unix. I suspect a Perl script could be written to do what I need, but I don't know enough about it to be sure about that either.

I started a thread some time ago that discussed the actual problem. Received some very thoughtful feedback and some code that seemed promising, but it became complicated so quickly that I couldn't follow. I realized I would have to learn a lot more just to understand the approaches and solutions that people were sending me. So I figure a few hours with a face-to-face meeting would be helpful.
 

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vgrindefs(5)                                            Standards, Environments, and Macros                                           vgrindefs(5)

NAME
vgrindefs - vgrind's language definition data base SYNOPSIS
/usr/lib/vgrindefs DESCRIPTION
vgrindefs contains all language definitions for vgrind(1). Capabilities in vgrindefs are of two types: Boolean capabilities which indicate that the language has some particular feature and string capabilities which give a regular expression or keyword list. Entries may continue onto multiple lines by giving a as the last character of a line. Lines starting with # are comments. Capabilities The following table names and describes each capability. +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |Name | Type |Description | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |ab | str |Regular expression for the start of an | | | |alternate form comment | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |ae | str |Regular expression for the end of an alter- | | | |nate form comment | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |bb | str |Regular expression for the start of a block | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |be | str |Regular expression for the end of a lexical | | | |block | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |cb | str |Regular expression for the start of a com- | | | |ment | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |ce | str |Regular expression for the end of a comment | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |id | str |String giving characters other than letters | | | |and digits that may legally occur in iden- | | | |tifiers (default `_') | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |kw | str |A list of keywords separated by spaces | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |lb | str |Regular expression for the start of a char- | | | |acter constant | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |le | str |Regular expression for the end of a charac- | | | |ter constant | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |oc | bool |Present means upper and lower case are | | | |equivalent | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |pb | str |Regular expression for start of a procedure | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |pl | bool |Procedure definitions are constrained to | | | |the lexical level matched by the `px' capa- | | | |bility | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |px | str |A match for this regular expression indi- | | | |cates that procedure definitions may occur | | | |at the next lexical level. Useful for lisp- | | | |like languages in which procedure defini- | | | |tions occur as subexpressions of defuns. | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |sb | str |Regular expression for the start of a | | | |string | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |se | str |Regular expression for the end of a string | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |tc | str |Use the named entry as a continuation of | | | |this one | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ |tl | bool |Present means procedures are only defined | | | |at the top lexical level | +-------+---------+--------------------------------------------+ Regular Expressions vgrindefs uses regular expressions similar to those of ex(1) and lex(1). The characters `^', `$', `:', and `' are reserved characters and must be `quoted' with a preceding if they are to be included as normal characters. The metasymbols and their meanings are: $ The end of a line ^ The beginning of a line d A delimiter (space, tab, newline, start of line) a Matches any string of symbols (like `.*' in lex) p Matches any identifier. In a procedure definition (the `pb' capability) the string that matches this symbol is used as the procedure name. () Grouping | Alternation ? Last item is optional e Preceding any string means that the string will not match an input string if the input string is preceded by an escape character (). This is typically used for languages (like C) that can include the string delimiter in a string by escaping it. Unlike other regular expressions in the system, these match words and not characters. Hence something like `(tramp|steamer)flies?' would match `tramp', `steamer', `trampflies', or `steamerflies'. Contrary to some forms of regular expressions, vgrindef alternation binds very tightly. Grouping parentheses are likely to be necessary in expressions involving alternation. Keyword List The keyword list is just a list of keywords in the language separated by spaces. If the `oc' boolean is specified, indicating that upper and lower case are equivalent, then all the keywords should be specified in lower case. EXAMPLES
Example 1: A sample program. The following entry, which describes the C language, is typical of a language entry. C|c|the C programming language: :pb=^d?*?d?pd?(a?)(d|{):bb={:be=}:cb=/*:ce=*/:sb=":se=e": :le=e':tl: :kw=asm auto break case char continue default do double else enum extern float for fortran goto if int long register return short sizeof static struct switch typedef union unsigned void while #define #else #endif #if #ifdef #ifndef #include #undef # define endif ifdef ifndef include undef defined: Note that the first field is just the language name (and any variants of it). Thus the C language could be specified to vgrind(1) as `c' or `C'. FILES
/usr/lib/vgrindefs file containing vgrind descriptions SEE ALSO
ex(1), lex(1), troff(1), vgrind(1) SunOS 5.10 10 Aug 1994 vgrindefs(5)
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