Better WCMATCH?

AutoLISP of course does not have a full fledged regexp engine like PERL or VBSCRIPT but only has lowly WCMATCH which is not quite up to the task. Does anyone...

1. Has anyone written a better WCMATCH for themself that they can share with us or

2. Is there any way to access the VBSCRIPT regexp from within AutoLISP?

 

Not to sound dumb, but what is regexp?

 

Sorry, a "regexp" is a REGular EXPression and WCMATCH is a regular expression pattern matching function but not as sophisticated as in other programs.

 

Where is it that wcmatch falls short of your expectations?

--
Autodesk Discussion Group Facilitator

VBSCRIPT but only has lowly WCMATCH which is not quite up to the task. Does
anyone...

 

Well, for one thing it doesn't handle maximum and minimum numbers of repetitions. You can't write something like

"ab(xy 3 5)pq"

to indicate you are matching from 3 to 5 copies of "xy".

 

Something I do on daily basis.......

-David

 

you should be able to set a reference to the vbscript.regexp interface via
lisp and use that
not sure if it should be:
(setq regex
(vla-getInterfaceObject
(vlax-get-acad-object)
"vbscript.regexp"
)
)

or:
(setq regex
(vlax-create-object
"vbscript.regexp"
)
)

either way returns the following:
#<VLA-OBJECT RegExp 18d01548>
_$


however when i try this
(vlax-dump-object regex)
i get this
; RegExp: nil
; error: bad argument type: fixnump: nil
so i don't know whats wrong

I don't know enough about reg exps to test the object but if I cant' even
dump it's props somethings not right

;if you get it working
;don't forget
(vlax-release-object regex)
(setq regex nil)

I found this searching my info files....haven't ever used it so don't know
if it would work for you
(usually *not recommended* to use acet-* functions)
eg:
(acet-str-find find string [ignoreCase [useRegExp]])

Find substring in string.

Arguments
find: The substring to locate.
string: The string to search.
ignoreCase: If provided and non-nil, indicates that case
insensitive
comparisons should be performed.
useRegExp: If provided and non-nil, indicates that regular
expressions should be used for searching.

This function uses the following definitions for regular
expressions:

. Matches any single character.
* Postfix. Preceeding item 0 or more times.
+ Postfix. Preceeding item 1 or more times.
^ Matches empty string at beginning of text.
$ Matches empty string at end of text.
[chars] Matches any character in the given class. If the first
character is ^, match any character not in the given class. A
range
of character may be specified by first-last, as in [A-Z] to
specify
upper case alphabetic characters.
\( Mark the beginning of a subexpression.
\) Mark the end of a subexpression.
\digit Matches a repeat of the text matched earlier by the
subexpression inside the nth opening parenthesis. Subexpressions
may
also be referenced in replace strings.


Return Values
The 1-based index if found, or nil if not found.

good luck and let us know if anything worked
hth
Mark

VBSCRIPT but only has lowly WCMATCH which is not quite up to the task. Does
anyone...

 

;; REGEXP.LSP
;; Copyright (c) 2004, Tony Tanzillo
;;
;; Sample showing how to use RegExp from Visual LISP

(defun RegExpTest ( / RegExp cnt match result i)

(setq RegExp (vlax-create-object "VBScript.RegExp"))

(vlax-put-property RegExp 'Pattern "is.")

(vlax-put-property RegExp 'Global :vlax-true)

(vlax-put-property RegExp 'IgnoreCase :vlax-true)

(setq result
(vlax-invoke-method RegExp 'Execute "IS1 is2 IS3 is4")
)

(princ
(strcat
"\nMatches found: "
(itoa (setq cnt (vlax-get-property Result 'Count)))
)
)

(setq i 0)
(repeat cnt
(setq match (vlax-get-property Result 'Item i))
(princ
(strcat
"\nMatch[" (itoa i) "]: "
(vlax-get-property Match 'Value)
)
)
(setq i (1+ i))
)

(vlax-release-object result)
(vlax-release-object RegExp)

)

;;;;;;;;;;; REGEXP.LSP ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

is not quite up to the task. Does anyone...

 

Thank you so much, this will be of enormous help. Too bad the AutoLISP help file for WCMATCH doesn't have this useful piece of information in it.